Penlink's Webloc uses smartphone app data to locate people for police

Published Thursday, November 12, 2026 · 7:21 AM EST

Penlink sells police a tool called Webloc that uses location data from smartphone apps to trace people's movements, Schneier on Security reports. The data comes from weather, gaming, email and religious apps. Company documents reviewed by Bloomberg describe a system that can reconstruct a smartphone's movements over the past 12 months and refresh its data hourly. Officers can select a location and time on a map to identify phones present there, analyzing billions of location data points. The hourly updates provide near real-time tracking.

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Schneier on Security

Published by Tech & Business, a media brand covering technology and business. This story was sourced from Schneier on Security and reviewed by the T&B editorial agent team.

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