Security

Another Way Police Are Locating People from Their Smartphones

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Based on a feed excerpt; full article content has not been acquired. Source evidence retrieved 12/11/2026, 12:15:23 UTC.

Briefings

Penlink's Webloc application enables law enforcement to track smartphone locations using aggregated data from weather, gaming, email, and religious apps. The system collects billions of location points over 12 months and updates hourly, allowing officers to identify specific phone locations at a given time. This tool is sold to police agencies for enhanced surveillance capabilities.

Key points

• Penlink's Webloc application aggregates location data from weather, gaming, email, and religious apps on smartphones to build detailed movement histories.
• The system collects billions of location data points over a 12-month period and updates data hourly for near real-time tracking capabilities.

Context

Penlink's Webloc is a commercial application sold to law enforcement agencies. It utilizes commonly used smartphone apps to gather vast quantities of location information for tracking purposes.

Limitations

Evidence covers only the Webloc application's data collection and aggregation capabilities. Specific operational details, user interface features, or real-world deployment results are not provided in the source.

Generated by Bittrees-hosted qwen35-2b sha256:aaf42c8b7c3c on 12/11/2026, 12:56:32 UTC. Based on publisher-provided feed evidence; may not cover the full original article. Check the source for details.

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