A complete evaluation of the highest 10 social media platforms reveals that X (previously Twitter) stands out as essentially the most invasive collector of person location info, gathering each exact and coarse location knowledge throughout all classes listed in Apple’s App Retailer privateness framework.
This intensive knowledge harvesting raises important privateness issues as location monitoring can expose intimate particulars about customers’ private {and professional} lives.
Key Takeaways1. X collects each exact and coarse location knowledge for each use case.2. Location monitoring can uncover delicate private particulars.3. Solely Reddit avoids identification linkage; mitigate through disabling providers, VPNs, and permission audits.
Location Information Harvesting
Not like its opponents, X collects location knowledge for each attainable objective outlined in App Retailer privateness insurance policies.
The platform gathers each exact location knowledge coordinates with three or extra decimal locations in latitude and longitude, and coarse location knowledge with decrease decision accuracy.
This complete method consists of third-party promoting, inside advertising, analytics, product personalization, app performance, person monitoring, and unspecified “different functions.”
A visible breakdown highlighting how varied social media platforms, together with X, acquire customers’ exact location knowledge for a number of functions. (Supply: Surfshark)
The research reveals that 60% of analyzed social media platforms acquire exact location knowledge for third-party promoting, together with X, Instagram, Threads, Fb, Pinterest, and Snapchat.
Nonetheless, X’s method extends past promoting into monitoring territory, the place it could mix location info with knowledge from different functions or web sites. This observe doubtlessly allows knowledge sharing with knowledge brokers who can subsequently promote person info to third-party companies.
Surfshark stories that the situation monitoring methodologies employed by these platforms make the most of varied geolocation vectors together with International Positioning System (GPS) coordinates, Bluetooth Low Power (BLE) beacons, Wi-Fi entry level triangulation, mobile tower positioning, and Web Protocol (IP) deal with geolocation.
Even when customers disable exact location sharing by way of system settings, platforms can nonetheless derive approximate places by way of these different knowledge sources.
The privateness implications of aggressive location monitoring prolong far past easy geographical consciousness.
Steady location monitoring at 30-minute intervals can assemble detailed behavioral profiles revealing employment places, wage brackets inferred from office addresses, medical circumstances by way of healthcare facility visits, and doubtlessly compromising private relationships by way of in a single day location correlations.
Among the many analyzed platforms, solely Reddit implements user-centric privateness protections by declaring that location knowledge is not going to be linked to person identification.
TikTok and Reddit show extra conservative approaches by solely amassing coarse location knowledge slightly than exact coordinates.
In distinction, X’s complete knowledge assortment technique encompasses each precision ranges throughout all practical classes.
The research methodology examined App Retailer privateness labels for X, Instagram, Threads, Fb, Pinterest, Snapchat, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit as of August 11, 2025.
Whereas 90% of platforms acquire coarse location knowledge and 60% collect exact coordinates for inside promoting functions, X’s common assortment method represents essentially the most intensive location knowledge harvesting amongst main social media functions.
Technical mitigation methods for customers embrace disabling location providers on the working system degree, using Digital Personal Community (VPN) providers to masks IP-based geolocation, and repeatedly auditing app permissions by way of system privateness settings.
Nonetheless, full location privateness stays difficult given the a number of knowledge vectors accessible to decided platforms.
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