Carriers selling your location to bounty hunters: It was worse than we thought
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/6/18214667/att-t-mobile-sprint-location-tracking-data-bounty-hunters
Remember last month, when we learned that AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint had not immediately fulfilled their promises to stop selling the real-time location of your phone to shady third-parties, and a black market had sprung up to meet the demands of even shadier individuals who might like to know where you are?
Well, Motherboard is doubling down on the investigation that revealed these things, and today it’s reporting that the scandal may be larger than we thought. You’ll probably want to take a look at their full story, but the gist is this: until late 2017, a second-hand data broker called LocationSmart sold data to a third-hand data broker known as CerCareOne, which in turn let as many as 250 bounty hunters and bail bondsman find an AT&T, T-Mobile or Sprint phone’s real-time location for a fee.