Location & Geolocation Data Brokers
Your phone is the product
Location Data Brokers: Your Phone is the Product
Location data brokers collect precise GPS coordinates from your smartphone, typically through SDKs embedded in apps or through the real-time ad bidding process. This data reveals where you live, work, worship, seek medical care, and who you associate with. It is among the most sensitive data collected about you.
Gravy Analytics / Unacast / Venntel
What they are: Gravy Analytics merged with Norwegian-founded Unacast in November 2023, creating one of the largest location data companies.[1] Its wholly-owned subsidiary Venntel is a government contractor selling the same data to law enforcement.[2]
What data they have: More than 17 billion location signals daily from approximately 1 billion smartphones.[2] They do not embed SDKs directly into apps; they acquire all data indirectly through other data brokers including Complementics, Predicio, and Mobilewalla.[3]
Who buys it: Venntel's customers include ICE, CBP, FBI, DEA, and IRS.[4] Commercial customers include advertisers and analytics firms.
Enforcement: On December 3, 2024, the FTC took action against Gravy and Venntel for unlawfully selling sensitive location data that tracked consumers at health facilities, places of worship, and other sensitive locations.[2] In January 2025, Gravy suffered a massive data breach after a hacker accessed its AWS S3 cloud storage, exposing 17 terabytes of location data.[5]
Outlogic (formerly X-Mode Social)
What they are: Collected location data from hundreds of apps including Muslim Pro, one of the most popular Muslim prayer apps worldwide (98+ million downloads).[6] Renamed from X-Mode Social in August 2021 after public backlash over selling location data from Muslim prayer apps to the U.S. military. Acquired by Digital Envoy and rebranded as Outlogic.[7]
Who buys it: Pentagon contractors, commercial advertisers.[6]
Enforcement: Banned by both Apple and Google app stores in December 2020.[8] In January 2024, the FTC proposed an order banning Outlogic from selling precise location data — the FTC's first-ever such prohibition — finalized in April 2024.[9]
Name history: X-Mode Social → Outlogic (Aug 2021, acquired by Digital Envoy) → FTC enforcement
Babel Street (Locate X)
What they are: Government contractor headquartered in Reston, Virginia.[10] Sells location data through its "Locate X" product, which allows clients to draw digital fences around any location on earth and track every device that enters or exits.[11]
Who buys it: CBP, ICE, FBI ($27 million contract for 5,000 Babel X social media surveillance licenses, March 2022[12]), OFAC, U.S. Treasury[13], Secret Service.[14] Also provides social media intelligence (OSINT) across 200+ languages.[15]
Fog Data Science (Fog Reveal)
What they are: Secretive company selling mass surveillance tools to local police departments. Claims "billions" of data points on "over 250 million" devices.[16]
What they sell: Access through the Fog Reveal web application for under $10,000/year.[16] Creates "patterns of life" analyses that track individuals' movements over time without requiring search warrants.[17] Approximately 40 contracts across nearly two dozen law enforcement agencies.[18]
Mobilewalla
What they are: Claims coverage of 40+ countries and 5+ years of historical data. As of 2021, Mobilewalla reported 1.9 billion+ devices and 50 billion mobile signals daily; the company has since updated these figures to 2.2 billion devices and 75 billion+ signals daily.[19]
Enforcement: FTC prohibited Mobilewalla from selling sensitive location data in December 2024, marking the first time the FTC alleged that collecting consumer data from online advertising auctions (real-time bidding) for non-advertising purposes was an unfair practice.[20]
Kochava, Inc.
What they are: Idaho-based location data broker providing precise geolocation data and consumer profiles through "Kochava Collective."[21]
Enforcement: Sued by the FTC in August 2022 for selling data that could tie individuals to sensitive locations including reproductive health clinics and places of worship.[22]
InMarket Media
What they are: Location data company.
Enforcement: Subject of a 2024 FTC settlement that banned InMarket from selling or sharing precise consumer location data and from targeting consumers based on sensitive location data.[23] The order, finalized in May 2024, also required deletion of all previously collected location data.[24]
Foursquare (absorbed Factual)
What they are: Merged with Factual in April 2020, combining two of the largest location datasets in the world: 500 million+ devices, 25 million opted-in users, 105+ million points of interest across 190 countries.[25] At the time of the merger, the combined entity generated $150+ million in annual revenue across more than 20 global markets, trusted by Microsoft, Uber, Samsung, Snap, and more than half of the Fortune 100.[25]
SafeGraph
What they are: Sold location data including Planned Parenthood visit data; Vice/Motherboard purchased a week's worth of location data for over 600 Planned Parenthood locations for just over $160.[26] Agreed to permanently stop selling data collected at abortion clinics after pressure from Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressional colleagues.[27] Purchased location data from the family safety app Life360.[28] Spun off its academic data access program into a separate company called Dewey Data in 2022.[29]
Near (formerly Near Intelligence)
What they are: Described itself as "The World's Largest Dataset of People's Behavior in the Real-World" with data representing 1.6 billion people across 44 countries.[30] Filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on December 8, 2023.[31] Assets were subsequently sold through bankruptcy court to a new entity called Azira.[32]
Other Location Data Brokers
Life360: The Family Safety App That Sold You Out
Life360, used by approximately 33 million people globally at the time of the investigation (the app has since grown to over 95 million monthly active users[37]), was investigated by The Markup in December 2021 for selling precise location data to approximately a dozen data brokers.[28] After announcing it would stop, the company was later found creating audience segments based on user location visits and selling them through LiveRamp's Data Marketplace in August 2024.[38] A class action lawsuit (E.S. v. Life360) was filed in January 2023 alleging Life360 secretly sold users' geolocation data, but the case was voluntarily dismissed with prejudice in November 2023.[39]