William Budington

Lena Cohen

Friday 2000 Crystal Ballroom: Last year at HOPE, William discussed the dangers of location data brokers tracking billions of people through mobile apps and selling their location to the highest bidder. This year, he'll dive deeper into how and why mobile apps betray our location privacy. Advertising libraries included in a vast array of apps can transmit location data from your device sensors to surveillance tools available to the government and sold on the open market. While parts of this data pipeline remain shrouded by corporate secrecy, we can shine light on its starting point through analysis of the SDKs powering advertisements and harvesting location data in our mobile apps. You will learn the findings from looking at these components at EFF's Threat Lab, techniques that are used to investigate apps, and conclusions about what is needed to stop mobile advertising from fueling the location surveillance industry.