Phone Location Data of Top EU Officials for Sale

Phone location data of top EU officials for sale raises major privacy, security concerns across Europe.
Matilda
Phone Location Data of Top EU Officials for Sale
Phone location data of top EU officials for sale: What happened? A new investigation has revealed that phone location data of top EU officials for sale was easily accessible through commercial data brokers. Reporters found that more than 278 million location data points —collected from ordinary mobile apps—could be purchased with little oversight. This discovery raises urgent questions about privacy, cybersecurity, and Europe’s ability to enforce its strong data protection laws, including the GDPR. Image Credits:Vadym Ivanchenko / Getty Images How was the phone location data of top EU officials for sale obtained? Journalists were able to acquire the dataset through a free sample from a data broker. The information included detailed movements of EU employees, with 2,000 location markers from 264 officials and 5,800 markers from over 750 devices inside the European Parliament. Despite GDPR protections, weak enforcement has allowed the data-brokering industry to grow into a multi-billion-doll…