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by allwein 5532 days ago
The device location is not logged in this database at all.

What it does is log the locations of all cell towers that it can communicate with at a point in time. So for a given timestamp, there will be dozens of points logged. So while the data will be able to say "You were somewhere in downtown Pittsburgh at 1:59PM on Monday", it won't be able to say "You were at 517 Liberty Ave at 1:59 on Monday." Also, timestamps for existing towers are updated whenever they are mapped an additional time. So if I was downtown again on Thursday, no one would be able to tell from my data that I had been there on Monday.

See my previous comment in another thread for more detail:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2467895

1 comments

Does it record signal strength from the towers, which would allow triangulation?