Provider wie T-Mobile oder AT&T verkaufen Deinen Standort … an Kopfgeldjäger (Bounty Hunter). Motherboard (USA) hat dies herausgefunden. Deine Telefonnummer reicht aus. Mehr braucht man nicht:
„Nervously, I gave a bounty hunter a phone number. He had offered to geolocate a phone for me, using a shady, overlooked service intended not for the cops, but for private individuals and businesses. Armed with just the number and a few hundred dollars, he said he could find the current location of most phones in the United States.
The bounty hunter sent the number to his own contact, who would track the phone. The contact responded with a screenshot of Google Maps, containing a blue circle indicating the phone’s current location, approximate to a few hundred metres.
Queens, New York. More specifically, the screenshot showed a location in a particular neighborhood—just a couple of blocks from where the target was. The hunter had found the phone (the target gave their consent to Motherboard to be tracked via their T-Mobile phone.)
The bounty hunter did this all without deploying a hacking tool or having any previous knowledge of the phone’s whereabouts. Instead, the tracking tool relies on real-time location data sold to bounty hunters that ultimately originated from the telcos themselves (…)“
Unsere Standortdaten enthalten mehr vertrauliche Informationen, als die Inhalte unserer Gespräche. Bekannt wurde dies in den USA. Es bleibt abzuwarten, ob dies auch gängige Praxis in Europa ist, denn t-mobile US ist ein Unternehmen der Deutschen Telekom.