As coronavirus spreads, yet another company brags about tracking you

Nothing turns a potential scandal into a marketing opportunity quite like a pandemic. 

It was just three months ago that a leaked dataset containing 12 million people’s precise location data was considered evidence of a looming national privacy disaster. Oh, how the times have changed. In the face of the deadly coronavirus, companies that keep tabs on Americans’ locations are clamoring for our attention — and in the process arguing that their particular brand of surveillance is good, actually. 

The latest addition to this party is Tectonix, which, in collaboration with X-Mode, tweeted a now-viral video demonstrating what it claims is the movement of spring break partiers after they departed a Florida beach. 

“Want to see the true potential impact of ignoring social distancing,” read the tweet from Tectonix. “Through a partnership with @xmodesocial, we analyzed secondary locations of anonymized mobile devices that were active at a single Ft. Lauderdale beach during spring break.” 

The accompanying video shows little dots, presumably representing individual people, departing from a beach and traveling all across the country. The intended point is clear: Stay home and stop the spread of the coronavirus. 

The unintended point, however, is where things get tricky. 

How, after all, did Tectonix and X-Mode — two companies you’ve likely never heard of — get precise location data on so many Americans? And what, other than make videos about spring breakers, do they do with it?

A visit to Tectonix’s website provides some answers, but not many. The company bills itself as a offering a “hyperspeed location data platform” that allows it customers to do nifty things like, but not limited to: “Map real-time foot traffic throughout cities to uncover emerging neighborhoods,” “track your customers movement and actions at scale to optimize ad buys,” and “analyze where else your customers go to identify potential partnership opportunities[.]”

In other words, Tectonix’s bread and butter is your location data. 

X-Mode’s website, meanwhile, wouldn’t load at the time of this writing. Using the WayBackMachine and reading the site as it was on March 4, we see that the company licenses out “high quality location data.”

“X-Mode is creating a new standard for accuracy and transparency in the location data industry,” claimed the site. “We are building the world’s largest, first-party and privacy-conscious location data panel.”

We reached out to Tectonix and X-Mode with a host of questions about the source of the data involved in the above map. After an initial offer to chat, a Tectonix spokesperson stopped replying to our emails when we mentioned this was a story about location tracking. We did not receive an immediate response from X-Mode. 

Tectonix has, however, responded to criticism on Twitter. 

“Understand the concern, but every point of data we used here is completely anonymized and collected with user consent,” insisted the company.

Notably, as the New York Times reported in December, it is essentially impossible to anonymize detailed location data. 

At least X-Mode has (or, had as of Feb. 19, anyway) a privacy policy linked directly on its site — something which Tectonix appears to be lacking. The privacy policy explains how X-Mode gets location data (mainly software development kits, aka SKDs, placed inside the free apps people download), and that when “you download and use an App that uses our Services and have Location Services ‘On’ and Limit Ad Tracking ‘OFF’, both X-Mode and our Trusted Partners may use the information the developer of the app allows us to collect[.]” 

The information being collected, according to the X-Mode privacy page, is pretty astounding. It includes, but is not limited to: “Geolocation of the Device,” “”how long your device stayed at one place,” “signals from the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as smartwatches or smart home devices,” “Advertising IDs, or Unique Device Identifiers for Advertising,” and “current IP address.”

Collecting this information, and apparently sharing it with Tectonix, appears to be what enabled the creation of the spring break viral video tweeted above. 

Oh yeah, and remember those “trusted partners” mentioned above? There sure are a lot of them. 

Image: screenshot / x-mode

Image: screenshot / x-mode

If you’re wondering whether or not this is legal, then you’re in luck! The company’s FAQ page asked that same question on Feb. 19 of this year.

“Is this legal,” it helpfully reads. “Most definitely. Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat monetize on their data one way or another. And with our GDPR compliant SDK, X-Mode goes above and beyond to make sure everything is Kosher.”

SEE ALSO: This company you’ve never heard of says it knows who isn’t socially distancing

There, don’t you feel better?

Both Tectonix’s and X-Mode’s attempt to spin the collection and sale of location data collection as a public health service follow a similar move by the likewise little known Unacast. Just earlier this week, the Norwegian company released a county-by-county breakdown stating where in the U.S. people are and are not social distancing.

There are an untold number of companies around the world with this level of detailed information. 

If this sort of data collection bothers you, can take a few steps to minimize your exposure. For starters, don’t allow any mobile app access to your location data unless it is absolutely imperative that it have that access to function (think Google Maps). More importantly, don’t download random apps from unknown developers — and delete apps from your phone as soon as you stop using them.

On the other hand, you may not mind an untold number of companies knowing how often you go to the liquor store, a medical marijuana dispensary, an AA meeting, a Planned Parenthood clinic, church, or strip club as long as that data can also be used in coordination with authorities to tamp down a deadly virus. That is a debate that privacy and health advocates are currently having. However, that doesn’t appear to be what’s going on here. 

We repeatedly asked Tectonix if it is working in any official capacity with health agencies in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus. We received no response. 

Whatever ends up happening with the coronavirus, companies that traffic in your location data were here before the pandemic and will remain long after it has gone. It’s worth keeping that in mind the next time one of them tries to package its wholesale invasion of Americans’ privacy as a benefit to the very populace it tracks. But hey, that video sure is cool, though.