[londons_explore]

It's time to differentiate selling "Bob is in Location X" from "Show this ad to all people at location X".

The first case is a far far bigger privacy concern to me, and seems to be what mobile networks were doing. Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are doing the latter.

[underpand]

Yes, there are a lot of malicious actors that actually sell data (apps, browser extensions, phone carriers, potentially ISPs, finance companies, etc.). Many of these actors even sell un-anonymized data. The big tech companies are very low on the totem pole of badness and will continue to stay that way for a long time because the incentives don't align for them to actually sell data.

[lonelappde]

If you click on the ad or run its JavaScript, it has your device info matching the ad geofence

[caconym_]

+1. I care way more about the existence of an api that tells anyone with money exactly where I am (and where I've been) than I do about one that anonymously attributes (in aggregate) my ad interaction stats to some place I was at or interested in.

[salawat]

No, it isn't. Both are essentially workable to do the same bloody thing, and just mean the same outcome can be achieved with the minor inconvenience of an additional layer of indirection.

Geolocation information shouldn't be considered a desirable dataasset to hold onto as a monetizable asset at all at the level of granularity that enables individual resolution.