There's a huge market for the location data your phone collects, like it or not. : The Indicator from Planet Money Your smartphone is pretty bad at keeping secrets – if it keeps track of your location, someone (or some app) almost definitely knows where you are. Today, the murky market for personal location data.

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The hidden market for your location data

The hidden market for your location data

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A man uses his mobile phone as he rests on a bench at a garden in Beijing on September 26, 2022. Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images

A man uses his mobile phone as he rests on a bench at a garden in Beijing on September 26, 2022.

Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images

It's no secret — your phone knows where you are, and if that data exists, someone else probably has it. Today, we dive into the murky world of the market for smartphone location data: How some apps surreptitiously track their users without their developers ever knowing, the political implications of companies and governments knowing where people are, and what one snarky weather app is doing about it.

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For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.