What is a movement profile ("Bewegungsprofil"), and why is it so revealing even without your name attached?

A movement profile is the time-and-space record of where someone has been; from it you can infer habits, relationships, work, and interests — making it deeply personal.

A movement profile documents the temporal and spatial sequence of a person's whereabouts — when they're where, how long they stay, and which routes they take. From this you can draw detailed conclusions about lifestyle, social contacts, work situation, and personal interests.

An SRF investigation revealed how many seemingly harmless apps systematically collect location data and sell it to third parties. Especially affected: weather apps, flight-tracking apps like Flightradar24, fitness trackers, and games with location features. They request location access and regularly forward data to data-broker networks — research traced location/movement profiles of millions of phones being sold to advertisers and brokers, with the trail running partly through companies in Lithuania.

Tip: Location is uniquely identifying because of routine — the place you sleep and the place you work, taken together, usually point to exactly one person, even with no name in the dataset.