Sure, it connects you with people, the Internet, stupid games and even your bank account. But it’s also a tracking device that your family, your favorite retailer and virtually any law-enforcement agency in the world can use to find you.
And you’re complicit in helping them do so. By keeping your phone on — and who doesn’t do that, except, of course, on airplanes? — you are letting any number of people and places have access to private information about you that you might not think you’re giving out.
Sometimes you’re putting the information into pretty packages by signing into sites like Foursquare, which is linked to your Facebook account, when you enter a restaurant, a bar, even a church.
“Location information can reveal a great deal about a person,” said Catherine Crump, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Unions.
It can show who you’re friends with, what medical offices you visit, what organizations you belong to and, in worst-case situations, where you’ve been when you don’t want to be found.
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