SafeGraph is the third location-data broker Google has cut off from Android in under a year, following the December Apple and Google ban on X-Mode's SDK — triggered by revelations that X-Mode supplied location data to US government contractors — and a February one-week ultimatum to strip out Predicio's code. The pattern shows Google enforcing through developer deadlines rather than public policy announcements.
The enforcement is not hypothetical: when transit app New York Subway was found sharing granular location with X-Mode, Google pulled it from the Play Store outright. The SafeGraph ban extends that precedent from consumer-facing apps to the SDK layer itself, where most developers never see whose hands their users' location ends up in.
First-order effects
Android apps embedding the SafeGuard location SDK must remove it or lose Play Store distribution, immediately cutting SafeGraph off from its primary supply of mobile location signals.
Developers who integrated the SDK for monetization now face a forced refactor on Google's timeline, with no advance public notice of the early-June ban.
Second-order effects
Location brokers like SafeGraph are pushed toward less transparent collection channels as the storefront route closes, raising scrutiny on which SDKs still pass review.
App developers face a recurring compliance tax — X-Mode, Predicio, now SafeGraph — making third-party location monetization SDKs a liability they increasingly decline to touch.
Third-order effects
If the ban-by-broker cadence holds, Google effectively becomes the regulator of the location-data supply chain on Android, deciding which brokers exist at scale without formal rulemaking.
The structural gap is that enforcement runs one SDK at a time; until app-store policies govern data resale contracts directly, each ban just reroutes the same underlying trade.
The trend: Mobile platforms are replacing privacy legislation as the de facto regulators of the location-data brokerage industry, banning brokers one SDK at a time after press exposure forces their hand.
Scoop: Google has banned a location data gathering firm that was funded by the former head of Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency. The company SafeGraph had a contract with the U.S. CDC to provide data, is also funded by Peter Thiel. A big move from Google. https://www.vice.com/..…
Safegraph is just one of dozens of secretive, unaccountable location data brokers who sell data about our most private activity to the highest bidder. Google is right to ban them, but it's not enough. https://twitter.com/...
The company was funded by Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, the head of Saudi intel who “quit” just days before the attacks of September 11. He was perhaps not a good partner for CDC. https://twitter.com/...
SafeGraph sells location data to essentially anybody. I bought $200 worth last year to check how easy it was. The company embeds its code into ordinary apps and gathers the info. Google has told all app developers to remove the code or be banned themselves https://www.vice.com/..…
The New York Times has used SafeGraph data for its own articles. At the time last year, we asked the Times if it felt comfortable using such data when its own reporters were covering the privacy implications. Times stood by it. Now that provider is banned https://www.vice.com/...…
There is no good reason for any of these companies to exist, and we need consumer privacy laws that enforce real privacy rights. In the meantime, Apple and Google should ban them all. https://www.eff.org/...
We can't rely on app stores to be the sole arbiters of “good” versus “bad” sellers of location data. Now is a good time to revisit the pandemic surveillance that was too-quickly embraced. https://www.vice.com/...
Another important @josephfcox story on the large, unregulated, and dangerous data brokerage industry: “SafeGraph markets its data to government entities and a wide range of industries, but it also sells the data on the open market to essentially anyone.” https://www.vice.com/...
Together with the Norwegian Consumer Council, I observed location data broker SafeGraph receiving exact GPS data from a teen app in GDPR land in 2019. Now Google banned SafeGraph. Once again, Google was slow, but still faster than EU regulators, sadly. https://t.co/ooYc753UTK
When I bought some SafeGraph location data last year, it showed that people who visited a specific church then went on to visit a list of other specific stores, etc. Prescient with the case of a Christian Substack outing a priest using location data https://www.vice.com/... https…
A rare move in the right direction for Google. “They are willing to sell extremely fine-grained data and anyone with a credit card can start buying it” https://www.vice.com/...
SafeGraph even lets customers buy extra data along with the location information. Buying a set of smartphone movements in this specific area? Here are the names of property owners for buildings in that place too. https://www.vice.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Company that harvested and sold all that personal location data that was used by New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to make fancy COVID maps everyone was excited about has been banned by Google for violating user privacy https://www.vice.com/...