Is Your Cell Phone Snitching On You? How Much Does It Know?

Yesterday's events shouldn't have surprised me. Companies have been tracing our movements through our cellphones for years now.

It's just, I don't get out much. It came as a bit of a shock. It's the first time it happened to me.

Grocery day. I fired up the Prius for its weekly excursion. Tucked my LG Tribute phone in my back pocket and forgot about it. It was on, but at no point did I take it out of my pocket or use it during my voyage.

I took a different route than usual. I drove past Smith's Auto Body, and thought for a minute about some work the car needs. Then I forgot about it. (It's been running fine despite its bent frame for three years now.) Got to the shopping plaza feeling hungry. Decided to grab lunch at a Mexican chain so I wouldn't overspend on groceries on account of an empty stomach. Had a passable taco salad. Paid with cash. Then I shopped for my groceries. Remembered diapers for my geriatric dog. Regular baby diapers work best, and cost a fraction what the pet ones do. Paid with a debit card, but didn't use any kind of loyalty or rewards card. No coupons either. Came home.

A couple of odd things happened. When I logged into Facebook, an ad for Smith's Auto Body blinked at me from the side. That's strange, I though. I was just thinking about them earlier today.

Then I scrolled through my feed. Suddenly, Facebook thinks I'm a dad. Sponsored Amazon ads are offering me different brands of diapers, sure, but also toys, kids play sets, all kinds of bright plastic monstrosities.

That night, when I took out my phone to charge it, it gave me a notification I'd never seen before. It was from Google Maps. "Leave a review of the Mexican restaurant and help your friends!" it said.

Now why the hell would it want me to do that? I thought.

That's when it hit me. I'd been tracked.

I bought this phone over two years ago for all of $40. I pay as much again every month for unlimited talk and text and more data than I ever use. It is not a powerhouse - more like a rusty Model T. It's only got enough storage to run a few apps. I use it to call my mother once a week, track my running workouts, and read e-books. It's enough. And as much as I've gotten used to my clicks and searches being tracked on the internet, this is the first time (other than exercise tracking) that I've found my movements in the real world coming back to face me through my browser window.

I guess I forgot to turn off the GPS after my last run. But it's strange that the Google Maps application hit me with a notification when I didn't even have Maps running. I track my exercise with a different program entirely. What's also weird is that I had data services switched off. That means that this old dinosaur of a phone had to sit on this location info until I made it home to wifi and it could radio up to the mother ship. It must have talked to the restaurant's wifi as well. How else could it have known that I went into that particular part of that building, and that I stayed long enough to eat a meal? What else did it tell the restaurant about me?

And either the grocery store had my movements tracked with their own wifi routers to the aisle, or they've colluded with the credit card processor, a third party advertising service, Amazon, and Facebook to make use of my diaper purchase in a spectacularly inappropriate ad targeting campaign.

Should it bother me that Google knows where I've driven and what I had for lunch? Maybe not. It's not like I've got anything to hide. (I'm writing about it here, after all.) But I can think of lots of reasons why sharing this information isn't in my best interests. Health insurance companies might be interested in my eating habits. If I stopped at the tobacconist, would that affect my premiums? What about all the jogging I do? Car insurance companies would certainly like to know where I drive, and how often, and how fast.

Actually, all kinds of actuaries must be salivating over all this fresh data. Which means law enforcement isn't going to be far behind. Is our presence in the vicinity of a crime enough to make us into a suspect?

Fifteen years ago, the only people who had their movements tracked like this were convicts on parole. Now we pay for the privilege.

---

I didn't write a review of the Mexican restaurant. If they want me to do that, they can pay me for it.

Come to think of it, I'd like to get some money from Google for my location data, too. It's obviously worth something to them.