
Dangerous Apps: In the Web of Data Brokers
Smartphone apps quietly collect location data that ends up traded on a global market of data brokers and advertising firms, and this DW investigation follows journalists sifting through roughly ten billion pieces of location data to see who buys it and why. The trail runs to an Egyptian journalist exiled in Berlin who receives threats, to Brussels where senior EU Commission staff turn up in the datasets, to Washington where officials flag the exposure of US agents stationed in Europe, and to the Ukrainian front, where soldiers recognize their own positions plotted from phone data. The investigation traces the supply chain back to a data dealer in Florida who sold location records on German and French users. Interviews with reporters, security officials, and affected individuals lay out how a jogging app or a weather app can reveal visits to a psychiatric clinic or a brothel, and how little Europe's data protection rules actually stop it. The film builds its case methodically, moving from individual harm to systemic risk.