Life360, a popular family safety app used by 33 million people worldwide, has been marketed as a great way for parents to track their children’s movements using their cellphones. The Markup has learned, however, that the app is selling data on kids’ and families’ whereabouts to approximately a dozen data brokers who have sold data to virtually anyone who wants to buy it.

This research quantifies and qualifies public opinion of location tracking in a variety of different contexts within web and mobile technology. Key findings include:

• 72% of people for websites and 68% of people for mobile apps do not consider location tracking to be acceptable before an account is created.
  
• 55% of people consider it “creepy” when websites know their location when they first open the site.
  
• Location sensitivity is context and control sensitive, so that people are more comfortable with location tracking when it is necessary (ex. directions, deliveries, weather, traffic) and when they are asked for permission.
  
• 81% of people for websites and 68% of people for mobile apps used at least one negative term to describe location tracking including creepy, bad, annoying, scary, and confusing.
  

From location tracking to federal law: These firms could track whether you've visited your therapist's office or your ex's house. And without regulation, they're a threat to democracy.

A Muslim prayer app with over 98 million downloads is one of the apps connected to a wide-ranging supply chain that sends ordinary people's personal data to brokers, contractors, and the military.

Privacy advocates are concerned that the new law can paint an unsettling picture of people's movements in Quebec.