E. Walter Le Roy wrote:

Joe bought his wife a cell phone for her birthday. This was her first
experience with one. Next day he called her and said "how do you like it/"
"Fine", she replied, "but how did you know I was at Wal-Mart?"




You think this is funny! For 911 response purposes, the cell phone
companies are
required to triangulate the location of all phones every couple of
minutes from
the several cell sites that can "hear" the phone, whenever it is turned
on to be
able to receive calls. (The newer phones have GPS receivers in them,
and the
cell sites interrogate the phones for location every couple of minutes.)
The cell
phone companies are required to keep this location tracking data for 7
years for
law enforcement purposes.

Well, the phone co's have this data laying around, what can they do to
make money off it?
So, they sell it to data banking outfits, who figured out even the
triangulation data
is good enough to tell which store a consumer is visiting, and the GPS
data is
good enough to tell when you are in the cosmetics aisle, and when you
are in the
pet food one. Then, they combine this with credit card info, and they
can figure
out what you bought, and when!

Jon