Investigation: data broker Near Intelligence left the coordinates of nearly 200 mobile devices of people who visited Jeffrey Epstein's island exposed online
A WIRED investigation uncovered coordinates collected by a controversial data broker that reveal sensitive information about visitors … Mastodon: @wchr@mastodon.social . Bluesky: @babyboomerwriter.bsky.social . X: @samkottler , @byrontau , @dmehro , @dmehro , @daithaigilbert , @andrewcouts , @dmehro , and @dmehro . Forums: r/privacy Mastodon: Wolfie Christl / @wchr@mastodon.social : Near Intelligence, a data broker that sold mobile location data from digital marketing to US defense firms, left an analysis online revealing the home/work locations of 200 persons who visited Epstein island. — Disturbing on many levels. It's disturbing that a data broker can secretly collect location data about billions of people. … Bluesky: BabyBoomerWriter / @babyboomerwriter.bsky.social : So much for secure devices... X: Sam Kottler / @samkottler : One of the most troubling tendencies of reporting on the state of privacy is the liability of publishing the underlying “conclusions” leads the writing to read like an ad for data broker capabilities. This piece suffers from that to an extreme degree - https://x.com/.... Byron Tau / @byrontau : Wild @dmehro and Dell Cameron story in @WIRED on how the controversial data broker Near left an analysis of mobile devices visiting to Jeffrey Epstein's islands on a publicly accessible website. Wired says they're combing through the data still. https://www.wired.com/... Dhruv Mehrotra / @dmehro : The data is extremely precise. It shows devices inside Epstein's waterfront “temple” and on his beaches, pools, and cabanas scattered across his 71-acres island. [image] Dhruv Mehrotra / @dmehro : A data broker tracked the devices of visitors to a private island where Jeffrey Epstein allegedly assaulted and trafficked countless women and girls. The data, exposed online, details precise coordinates where hundreds live and work in the US https://www.wired.com/... David Gilbert / @daithaigilbert : Absolutely incredible reporting here from @dmehro and Dell Cameron who uncovered years worth of location data from mobile devices, tracking people's movements from their homes to Jeffrey Epstein's “pedophile island” https://www.wired.com/... Andrew Couts / @andrewcouts : NEW: Nearly 200 mobile devices of people who visited Jeffrey Epstein's “pedophile island” left an invisible trail of data pointing back to their homes & offices, according to data WIRED discovered leaked online. @dmehro and Dell Cameron have the scoop: https://www.wired.com/... Dhruv Mehrotra / @dmehro : The company tracked people visiting Epstein's island back to locations in 80 US cities: Mansions in gated communities in Michigan and Florida; homes in Martha's Vineyard; a nightclub in Miami; across the street from Trump Tower; and on Epstein's other US properties [image] Dhruv Mehrotra / @dmehro : Near Intelligence — a controversial company with known ties to the defense industry — tracked the devices on behalf of an unknown client. It amassed more than 10,000 coordinates from Epstein's visitors, likely siphoned from advertising exchanges, and exposed them online [image] Forums: r/privacy : Jeffrey Epstein's Island Visitors Exposed by Data Broker
Context & Ripple Effects
This disclosure lands in a location-data market previously described as a multibillion-dollar ecosystem of collectors, aggregators, and marketplaces. It shows how data gathered for advertising can retain sensitivity well beyond its original commercial use.
The sector had already confronted the risk of location records exposing visits to sensitive places: SafeGraph stopped selling data tied to family-planning visits after concerns about misuse. This case extends that concern from category-level visitation to data that can be connected with home and work locations.
First-order effects
- People whose devices appear in the exposed analysis face heightened privacy and security risk because precise island movements can be associated with home and workplace patterns.
- Near Intelligence faces scrutiny over its handling of location data and the safeguards around analyses derived from data it collected for an unnamed client.
Second-order effects
- Location-data buyers, exchanges, and downstream analytics vendors may face greater pressure to limit retention, sharing, and accessibility of precise coordinates, especially where movement trails can identify people indirectly.
- The episode weakens the distinction between advertising-derived data and sensitive intelligence: customers using such datasets must account for the risk that ostensibly pseudonymous device records can be re-identified through repeated locations.
Third-order effects
- If similar exposures continue, the market may shift toward stricter controls on collection and access to precise location data, rather than relying on device identifiers as a meaningful privacy boundary.
- The durable issue is whether a supply chain built for audience targeting can safely support high-sensitivity uses; the answer will shape data brokers' role with commercial and government customers.
The trend: Precise mobile-location data is increasingly being treated as sensitive identity-linked information, challenging the ad-tech premise that device-level records are safely anonymous.