PSA: Location data is not anonymous. It cannot be made anonymous. Bruce Schneier

What's truly scary is how cheap the data is to buy. For less than 5k you can buy huge data sets. Most people have enough public records or social media presence even an amateur could identify them.

But I'm a weirdo because I'd rather not patronize strip clubs that scan ID's...

A Catholic priest patronizing a gay sex app. Be still my heart.

Turn off Location Services on your phone.

Having a burner phone doesn't really help when it's used at home and follows the other phone around all the time...

And, this doesn't use the location data on your phone... This tracking existed before phones had GPS.

Turning off GPS and/or location services is not a bad idea, but there are informed opinions out there that mobile carriers will exploit every loophole within their terms of service (TOS) to allow some form of location tracking even if GPS is turned off. And, generally speaking, mobile TOS contain many loopholes for the carrier.

For example, if your GPS is off but WIFI is on, then your location can be tracked based on the WIFI connections your phone makes. If your GPS and WIFI are both off, but your network connection is still on (3G, 4G, whatever), then your location can be roughly tracked based on the carrier towers to which your phone connects to establish a data or telephony connection.

With some carriers, it was discovered that turning off GPS did not fully disconnect location services. Buried within the TOS, there existed an explanation that turning off GPS wasn't a complete crimping of the hose, and that carriers were collecting a more limited set of location meta data. Which was completely legal, because you agreed to the TOS when you got the phone.

If you want total anonymity/security with your cell phone, it's a huge pain in the ass. You need to buy separate phone and carrier minutes both with cash. You will need to set up a VPN on your phone to help hide the location, etc. The list goes on from there about what apps you install and what permissions you allow those apps to have.

Ultimately, each person needs to calculate just how anonymous / secure they need to be. A guy who doesn't want his strip club visits to become part of possible future divorce proceedings can probably put his phone into "Airplane Mode" before he leaves his home, and that should be fine. A high-ranking priest in the Catholic Church probably should have done a lot more to keep his shenanigans private.

I don't even have a password on any of my phones or computers. Wife is free to look. If she cares some day I am sure I will hear about it. She knows I am taking a relative out to Desires for his birthday, cuz I told her.

I’m ok with this sort of outing of a priest. Sorry, but he should be held to a much higher standard. His actions are inappropriate for a priest.

This priests actions show why the Catholic Church is viewed horribly in many areas.

I’m not concerned about being tracked with my cell phone. There would need to be a reason why anyone would track a filthy pervert like me - and I don’t think there is anyone who cares where I’m going.

Your phone "connects" to a cell tower. This is logged by the carrier. they certainly do know the location of that tower. The tower regularly "pings" your phone and records response time. The response time will show distance from the tower reasonably accurately. Other towers in the are will also "ping" your phone to determine if the phone should connect to a closer tower.

Only way to prevent this is turning the radio off in your phone. Not sure what you have it for if that's turned off?

And while phone companies apparently sell this data, I'd assume they also do a pretty shit job of keeping it secure from hackers. Many people carry on about Google, Facebook, etc. collecting data, them having it is usually the least of my issue, it's who else can get it from them. (Facebook's proven to do very little to keep the data it collects on you safe, several cases shows it just "trusts" people buying access to it not to misuse it, or access more of it than they are suppose to...).

^^^ In this case the data was the location from the carrier end, not the GPS data on the phone itself. Turning off his GPS wouldn't have done a thing.

I'm also not super sympathetic of the priest. Ordinarily, I like to see peoples private lives being left alone. But in the case of an individual being a publicly visible leader in an organization that persecutes homosexuality and demonizes sex outside of marriage, all the while actively engaging in it I'm not so concerned about their privacy.

Dolfan and bk both zeroed in on location available when your mobile communicates with cell towers. Remember the uproar over FBI and local police use of Stingray tech to locate mobile phones independent of using GPS .

More importantly, the article highlights how easy and relatively inexpensive it is to collate information from publicly available database sources to obtain information about you and your activities.

Rather than seeking to limit providing info another approach is to participate in giving personal info but where possible "fuzzy it up" So, when possible, make changes in birthdate, spelling of name, hometown etc. When attempts are made to match info across various sources these alterations result in mismatch.

Use anonymizing apps to erase or change image exif/metadata. Use Fawkes image cloaking software to subltly alter your photos to prevent image search sw matching all of your publicly available photos. Visibly the photos remain unchanged.

In other words, you are contributing lots of 'intentionally error-filled' data to sabotage efforts to accumulate an accurate picture of you.