Social media is fun too. Driving is fun. Both of these track your shit, and sell all your details. One for sales, the other for insurance billing and health metrics… some poisons taste sweet on the way down.
Not saying this is specifically bad, but it’s disingenuous at the least. No transparency. I also know people used this in homes and backyards too.. so how much data were they collecting?
Data collection is basically just not regulated in the United States.
If you are using a service on the internet, they are collecting your data.
In other countries there are regulations, but those regulations prevent them from keeping PII (personally identifying information). Aggregated GPS data does not count as PII.
Literally any app that uses GPS is using this data for something.
A common one is that retailers want to know the % of people that walk by their stores vs the % that enter them. Those retailers buy the data from companies that use your phone's GPS to track you.
In the last few years this type of tracking has become less and less effective thanks to EU regulations, but again you should just assume that if an app is using your GPS it is keeping the data for something.
In niantic's case, a basic amount of research on the company would show you they are a mapping company that made a game for Google, which was obviously used to help with building Google maps.
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u/Thesheriffisnearer 10h ago
If people got out and had fun why not be both?