A quoted price to track one person was $2,500 a few years ago
Tau said sample data sells for hundreds to thousands of dollars and described a hypothetical plan to buy a worldwide feed for six figures.
The Shawn Ryan Show · #340 Byron Tau - The Government Doesn't Just Spy on You. It Buys You.ProPublica reporter Byron Tau said a private investigator working with him on his book was quoted $2,500 a few years ago for a full report on a named person's phone movements.
The investigator described a contractor who would take a name and return where the person goes, though Tau cautioned it does not always work because the data is spotty.
Samples of phone location, internet, and store purchase data cost several hundred to several thousand dollars on sites like DataRaid, where buyers pay by credit card, far less than a world feed.
Tau described a hypothetical business: he and a partner would start a defense contractor, buy the worldwide mobility feed for six figures based on contracts he had seen, and resell it to the government at, for example, a 20 percent markup. Some sellers hand over the raw file, while others let buyers search like Google Maps.
Questions people ask
Where does this phone location data come from?
Tau says the data comes off your phone when you opt into, for example, the weather app. Those signals go to advertising networks and brokers, which package samples, reports, or the worldwide feed for resale.
What does buying the data actually look like?
Tau says it depends on the vendor. Sometimes it is unstructured data, a giant spreadsheet that Tau says is now easier for ordinary people to handle with AI, and sometimes it is a slick subscription web app like Google Maps where you draw a circle and watch phones move.