Commercial geolocation: privacy is sold cheaply

It is not a secret for anybody that subscriber bases of mobile operators are being sold; for some reason this phenomenon has long been resigned, as well as the fact of the sale of personal data by insurance brokers. However, the development of commerce does not stand still and now a new progressive service has appeared on the market - trading in geo-location of subscribers of cellular operators. Fashion trend in marketing called geo-sms or geo-targeting. Have you ever received an adware SMS, referring to the object, near which you are now located? Have you ever wondered how this works and why? Let's try to figure it out together.

What is geosms?

I will take an excerpt from the service description of one of its suppliers, quickly found in the vast network:
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And what follows from this? And here is what:

1. Real-time access to subscriber geolocation (in the most technically simple version - a list of numbers on a specific cell)
2. On the basis of statistics on the movement of subscribers of cellular networks, an analyst is made at places of frequent visits. Home, work, places of leisure.

All this is done by a commercial organization on a reimbursable basis for any customer. Imagine the possibilities opening up! The only mystery for me is the method of transferring data from mobile operators to the geo-distribution service provider. The cost of such a service is very low - less than a ruble for a geo-targeted message.

Personal experience

I myself learned about this system purely by chance - I received a geo-targeted SMS being next to the object specified in it. In general, I rarely receive SMS spam, so I noticed, and how well - there was a link in this SMS, which included the word “geosms” which gave a starting point for the search. The appeal to my telecom operator and the company-customer of distribution through public channels did not succeed - the representative of the operator said that this was a coincidence and the geo-location was not transmitted to third parties, the customer of the distribution tried to laugh it off, and simply ignored the direct question about the source of my location information. The geo-targeted newsletter services found in the open spaces show scans of licenses for communication services and personal data processing, while indicating in all advertising materials that they work with a legitimate customer base that does not combine with the functionality of online geo-distribution that requires information about the presence of these phone numbers in this sector. Other providers of this service even have published thank-you letters from mobile operators for fruitful cooperation. I do not understand how such a business can be legitimate and where in my communication contract my consent to the transfer of my geo-coordinates to third parties in real time is written.

Drawing attention to the problem

This text was written in order to draw attention to this problem, which in my opinion poses a serious threat to privacy and hides a very negligent attitude to the personal data of subscribers of mobile operators. It would be great to receive a detailed comment from representatives of providers of similar services or mobile operators.