Forbes: “…NSA warns that “mobile devices store and share device geolocation data by design…Location data can be extremely valuable and must be protected. It can reveal details about the number of users in a location, user and supply movements, daily routines (user and organizational), and can expose otherwise unknown associations between users and locations.”

EFF: “A global spy tool exposed the locations of billions of people to anyone willing to pay. A Catholic group bought location data about gay dating app users in an effort to out gay priests. A location data broker sold lists of people who attended political protests. What do these privacy violations have in common? They share a source of data that’s shockingly pervasive and unregulated: the technology powering nearly every ad you see online. Each time you see a targeted ad, your personal information is exposed to thousands of advertisers and data brokers through a process called “real-time bidding” (RTB). This process does more than deliver ads—it fuels government surveillance, poses national security risks, and gives data brokers easy access to your online activity. RTB might be the most privacy-invasive surveillance system that you’ve never heard of. What is Real-Time Bidding? RTB is the process used to select the targeted ads shown to you on nearly every website and app you visit. The ads you see are the winners of milliseconds-long auctions that expose your personal information to thousands of companies a day. Here’s how it works:

1. The moment you visit a website or app with ad space, it asks a company that runs ad auctions to determine which ads it will display for you. This involves sending information about you and the content you’re viewing to the ad auction company.
2. The ad auction company packages all the information they can gather about you into a “bid request” and broadcasts it to thousands of potential advertisers.
3. The bid request may contain personal information like your unique advertising ID, location, IP address, device details, interests, and demographic information. The information in bid requests is called “bidstream data” and can easily be linked to real people. 
4. Advertisers use the personal information in each bid request, along with data profiles they’ve built about you over time, to decide whether to bid on ad space.
5. Advertisers, and their ad buying platforms, can store the personal data in the bid request regardless of whether or not they bid on ad space…”