Police Use Webloc Tool to Track Smartphone Location Data From Popular Apps

Police departments are employing a new application called Webloc, developed by Penlink, to gather vast quantities of location data from individuals’ smartphones, according to company documents reviewed by Bloomberg. The tool leverages information from commonly used weather, gaming, email, and religious applications to build a detailed picture of a device’s movements.

Webloc can track a smartphone’s location history for up to 12 months, with the ability to update data hourly, providing near real-time insights into a person’s whereabouts. Law enforcement officers can use the system to pinpoint specific locations and times on a map, then identify all phones that were present, analysing “billions of location data points.”

The use of such tools raises significant privacy concerns, as it allows police to conduct widespread surveillance on individuals without their explicit knowledge or consent, simply by leveraging data passively collected by popular apps. This method of location tracking differs from traditional methods that often require specific warrants or direct access to carrier data, instead relying on the aggregated data sold by third-party app developers or data brokers.

This practice underscores the ongoing challenges in protecting digital privacy, as personal location information, even when seemingly innocuous, can be aggregated to reveal sensitive patterns of life and association.