[euniceee3]

So where can I, as an individual looking to do research, purchase a data set like this? What about my company wanting to to targeted outbound sales, are we able to purchase a data set like this?

I see the headlines. I understand there are companies that offer this as a service to LEO. I believe the data would need to be de-anonymized to be useful.

Who or where can I source data like this from?

[korse]

I would try entities in the California data broker registry as a starting point.

https://www.oag.ca.gov/data-brokers

De-anonymization shouldn't be that tough if you have the cash to pay for a handful of data sets that you think are likely to contain overlap.

[berkle4455]

Nobody sells it to individuals. Sprint sold customer location data through a subsidiary called Pinsight. Advan Research, Placer.ai, and SafeGraph are some current companies selling location data.

[sweetbitter]

Well, you could try something like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36672217

[poplet]

Corporations are first class people

[justrealist]

> I believe the data would need to be de-anonymized to be useful

I'm not aware of anyone selling person-level location data. Everyone in the ecosystem is far too scared to do that (and honestly not clear how to monetize).

It's all about foot traffic patterns and getting demographics, seeing what kind of other businesses they visit, etc IME. General location business analytics stuff.

[euniceee3]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/20/opinion/locat...

This is the article I am building my hypothesis on. If I am able to correlate place of business with an out of town event like a conference and then further refine with gender and ethnic filters.

I understand that companies will perform this analysis on your behalf. Can anyone recommend a "reputable" one?

[count]

Heh, only sort of joking, but this is literally Palantirs business model.

[justrealist]

I'm not saying it's impossible to put this together sometimes, I just don't think anyone is attempting to do so at a commercial level. It's really pretty unusual that you can heavily monetize the location of a single, real person.

[throwaway29281]

There is at least one company that doesn't seem afraid to de-anonymize https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj454d/private-intelligence-...

[sweetbitter]

If you just want to track a few individuals... Enumerate all those who possess the data. Now look for data brokers that they deal with (as commenter korse said) and recurse. Find all the employees of every company in question. Muster a few hundred bucks or so, seems to be the market price, and there you go[0].

For research I dunno. You'd probably have to make a deal directly with one of these companies, one way or another, so I would start by talking to them.

[0] - https://www.vice.com/en/article/nepxbz/i-gave-a-bounty-hunte...

[johndhi]

It's a good question. We always hear that it's happening but I never see it happening.