"Last month, Ireland's public broadcaster, RTÉ, revealed that near-real time phone locations of tens of thousands of citizens were available for sale online. Journalists were able to retrace the steps of individuals from a sample of 64,000 people that a data broker gave them for free. They followed anonymised individuals from sensitive locations - such as military bases, political office locations, and mental health clinics - back to residential addresses. Likely their homes."
"Following RTÉ's report, the DPC was quick to put out a statement saying it was "extremely concerned". That was followed, shortly afterwards, by an announcement that it had started an investigation. Ireland's Prime Minister, Micheál Martin, also told reporters that his government is working with the DPC to investigate the trade in digital location data, in view of wider security concerns."
RTÉ revealed near-real-time phone locations of tens of thousands of citizens were available for sale online. Journalists retraced steps of individuals from a 64,000-person sample provided free by a data broker, following anonymised users from sensitive sites — military bases, political offices, mental health clinics — back to residential addresses likely their homes. The Irish Data Protection Commission said it was "extremely concerned" and opened an investigation, and the Prime Minister said the government is working with the regulator over security concerns. Privacy activists say a persistent GDPR enforcement gap lets ad-tech harvest personal location data for profit and exploitation.
Read at Euractiv
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