Your (U.S.A.) cell network provider sells your location. No need for apps!

In this case wasn't it was a cell network provider wanting the info from twitter? why'd they want it if they already have it?

They (the telcos) only have stats on their customers. Twitter has it for anyone running twitter. Further, twitters location data is likely more accurate than the telco due to positioning from stuff like wifi names, local gps, etc.

Probably to correlate Twitter user names with telco customers.

Oh, wow. I didn't even think the request included Twitter handles.

I think it was just a bluff.

I assume most free weather app companies make money nearly exclusively by selling user location data.

> it seems cute that the guy thinks the change in ownership somehow makes it "safer" for him to share inside details

If the change in ownership means "I am never going back, time to set that bridge on fire" he's absolutely right it's "safer". Or simply if he thinks "It is now acceptable to future employers to do this", it is also safer.

Or maybe it was something that he now sees as a greater threat, and therefore is worth mentioning even if is not safer or even riskier.

It's not safer (and in fact probably the opposite) from a liability standpoint.

It depends on what you mean by liability. If you mean they have a 7+ year NDA, and the NDA covers undone features. then, yeah I guess Musk is more likely to sue. Maybe. Or maybe he'll love getting to shout how he would never do that, look how cool he is.

But I focused on reputational risk.

when the covid-19 pandemic came into real force (May?) I definitely saw a sample report from MAPBOX that showed aggregate consumer movement in the New England area, with extensive, quantitative classification on visits to retail, restaurant and public sites like schools. The visual was each and every individual track, but as lines of the same color. So the data on each individual track was there, but not named in the report. There were hundreds of thousands of input tracks, for some time range. The context was "were people violating lockdown, travelling to what destination" .. retail and restaurant were very prominent in the report.