It probably isn’t a surprise that your cell phone company knows a lot about you, including where you are right now and where you were last night. The phone company doesn’t really care where you were last night. But the police might, if they think you could be involved in a crime, they can scoop up your location data after the fact. But how would it feel to know that phone carriers are passing your location data on to third parties, and that you can’t opt out of that sharing?

Slate Senior Technology Writer Will Oremus says what’s happening here is different than the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal that captured so much attention among the public and the press. That scandal focused on Facebook users’ profile data and likes to help political campaigns, while the newest scandal concerns how wireless carriers are being careless with user location data with third parties.  

“They’re letting third parties, companies you’ve never heard of, have access to that data that they keep on you and where you are at all times,” Oremus says. “And they’re not making sure that those third parties are keeping that data safe. They’re not making sure that nobody gets access to that data who isn’t supposed to.”  

Oremus says that in some states, phone companies are prohibited from sharing your location data with law enforcement without a warrant, but there are fewer regulations for sharing that data with other private companies. LocationSmart is an example of a third party company that does mobile location tracking.