Recent findings have revealed the concerning ease with which top European Union officials’ mobile phone location data can be accessed and exploited using commercially obtained information, despite the stringent data protection laws in place across the continent. According to a report by Netzpolitik, journalists in Europe discovered that data brokers are selling location histories, raising concerns among EU officials regarding the unauthorized tracking of citizens and officials.
A coalition of journalists obtained a dataset, including 278 million location data points sourced from phones around Belgium, shedding light on the extensive reach of data brokers. The dataset also exposed the detailed location histories of prominent European officials, including those affiliated with the European Commission based in Brussels.
Despite Europe’s robust GDPR laws, enforcement actions against data brokers have been reported as sluggish, contributing to the flourishing billion-dollar industry involved in the sale and exchange of individuals’ private data. To combat such pervasive tracking, Apple users can anonymize device identifiers, while Android owners are advised to regularly reset their device identifiers.
Source: TechCrunch