Vent: I tracked my phone's location data for a year and the pattern freaked me out.

I got curious after a podcast talked about data collection, so I downloaded my Google location history from January to December last year. I saw I visited a specific coffee shop downtown 47 times. The weird part is, for two weeks in October when I was out of town, my phone's location pinged from a cell tower near that same shop every single morning at 7:15 AM. My phone was in a drawer at my sister's house 200 miles away. I know it's probably just a tower glitch or bad data, but it makes you wonder what else in that log is wrong. Has anyone else dug into their own data and found stuff that just doesn't line up?

2 comments

2 Comments

linda_owens220d ago

Honestly the creepiest part is that some algorithm probably used that bad data. Like it decided you love that place and now it's pushing ads for it.

elizabeth_mason2820d ago

Forty-seven times at one coffee shop is a lot, but that tower ping is the real kicker. Your phone was in a drawer two hundred miles away, but the data says it was getting coffee without you. It makes the whole log feel like a story someone made up, not a real record. If it can be that wrong about something so clear, what else is just a total guess?