this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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A social media and phone surveillance system ICE bought access to is designed to monitor a city neighborhood or block for mobile phones, track the movements of those devices and their owners over time, and follow them from their places of work to home or other locations, according to material that describes how the system works obtained by 404 Media.

Commercial location data, in this case acquired from hundreds of millions of phones via a company called Penlink, can be queried without a warrant, according to an internal ICE legal analysis shared with 404 Media. The purchase comes squarely during ICE’s mass deportation effort and continued crackdown on protected speech, alarming civil liberties experts and raising questions on what exactly ICE will use the surveillance system for.

“This is a very dangerous tool in the hands of an out-of-control agency. This granular location information paints a detailed picture of who we are, where we go, and who we spend time with,” Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy project director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media.


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[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 74 points 2 days ago (3 children)

FYI, the most relevant information to avoiding your phone showing up in ICE's rented databases is how they are getting the location data:

The material does not say how Penlink obtains the smartphone location data in the first place. But surveillance companies and data brokers broadly gather it in two different ways. The first is from small bundles of code included in ordinary apps called software development kits, or SDKs. SDK owners then pay the app developers, who might make things like weather or prayer apps, for their users’ location data. The second is through real-time bidding, or RTB. This is where companies in the online advertising industry place near instantaneous bids to get their advert in front of a certain demographic. A side effect is that companies can obtain data about peoples’ individual devices, including their GPS coordinates. Spy firms have sourced this sort of RTB information from hugely popular smartphone apps.

This includes a link to a prior 404 story that may have a list of apps, but it's paywalled and none of the archive sites seem to have it indexed: https://www.404media.co/candy-crush-tinder-myfitnesspal-see-the-thousands-of-apps-hijacked-to-spy-on-your-location/

[–] deliriousdreams@fedia.io 38 points 2 days ago (8 children)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ukgd0gIWd9gpV6bOx2pcSHsVO6yIUqbjnlM4ewjO6Cs/edit?usp=sharing&ref=404media.co

This is the link to the full list provided in that article but it may also be paywalled by 404 Media which I am a subscriber to. It's also got more than ~~1K~~ 10K entries on it.

A lot of these seem to be mobile games, fitness apps, photo editing apps, and prayer apps though.

[–] SlippiHUD@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago

My SMS app was on it. Which makes me sad because Textra was dope, I've moved to qksms.

In case you're wondering how to get a list of all the apps installed on your phone, these instructions worked for me https://www.javathinking.com/blog/how-to-get-the-list-of-all-apps-on-android-device-using-terminal/

I just wrote a quick script to check my list against the google doc. The official Merriam Webster app and the official Letterboxd app both got flagged.

[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thank you, that's exactly what I was looking for. More than *10K entries, by the look of it...

[–] deliriousdreams@fedia.io 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah. Typo. Seems to happen a lot when I'm typing fast on a phone screen. Sorry.

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

These are all presumably Android apps. Is there a list for IOS apps?

[–] deliriousdreams@fedia.io 5 points 2 days ago

404Media say that their list is a comprehensive list of both Android and iOS apps. So no as far as I know that is the list.

[–] tonytins@pawb.social 2 points 2 days ago

And, added it to the description.

[–] DBT@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Not paywalled.

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[–] mmmac@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Both of these sources seem like things that would be blocked by using a DNS sinkhole. I personally use technetium but pihole and adguard are more popular, but less feature rich and harder to set up as a recursive resolver.

[–] AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

If they want to target more technologically capable users, they'll just hard code the IP addresses so it doesn't need DNS and make any IP changes in routine updates.

[–] Tower@lemmy.zip 38 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I thought this was going to say they were deploying Stingrays in neighborhoods. Pretty sure this is worse, because at least a Stingray requires something be physically present. Fuck all of this.

[–] mrnobody@reddthat.com 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, same. I setup an Orbic with RayHunter exactly for this reason. I took that with me when I've gone by protests just to see if there's one present. Then, if in the clear, shut down my personal devices and attended. I'm paranoid like that I guess...

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Setup Meshtastic nodes too.

Having the ability to communicate without using cellular infrastructure is incredibly useful, especially during natural disasters (which ICE certainly qualifies).

[–] mrnobody@reddthat.com 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)
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[–] grue@lemmy.world 34 points 2 days ago (1 children)

"This is wrong" — Lucius Fox, The Dark Knight

Prescient, and also an example of copaganda/how corporate media conditions the public to accept this shit because the "good guy" is the one using it.

[–] Zorque@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I mean, they acknowledge that it's wrong, and they acknowledge that Bruce Wayne is not stable enough to have power by having him give the power to Lucius.

Not all scenes are so one-note that it only ever has one meaning or message.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Lucius shouldn't have that power either! It's not an issue of being "stable enough;" it's an issue of anyone having it. Frankly, your argument kinda proves my point.

It's analogous to a limited hangout. Sure, they acknowledge it's wrong, but that doesn't stop them from doing it and they suffer no bad consequences for that choice. Really, what's the Aesop people are actually going to take from it? The one based on the demonstrably empty words, or the one based on the actions?

[–] fort_burp@feddit.nl 25 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

In July 2023, PenLink merged with Israeli surveillance contractor Cobwebs Technologies

Tangles is a web platform, originally developed and sold by Israeli firm Cobwebs Technologies, that scrapes data from the open web, deep web, and dark web, as well as allowing for the tracking of mobile devices within a user-designated area, in a process known as "geofencing," through an optional add-on feature called WebLoc.

Source

Cobwebs and how the spying is going global.

WebLoc

[–] tronx4002@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Thanks for including the app list!

[–] dust_accelerator@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Laughs in root level location spoofing module

[–] ech@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

How does anything in your phone "spoof" triangulation by cell towers? Just tell them "This phone's not actually connected to you"?

[–] dust_accelerator@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

That's not what they're using. Apps that sell location data is the source.

Oh, and I have a removable battery for avoiding triangulation if need be.

[–] PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You can also get a faraday bag.

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