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

_Published Thursday, November 12, 2026 at 7:21 AM EST · Security, Policy · Latest · Tier 2 — Notable_

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.

## Sources

- [Schneier on Security](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/11/another-way-police-are-locating-people-from-their-smartphones.html)

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Canonical: https://techandbusiness.org/newswire/egfPstgFQfgp-a11quHM23
Published: 2026-11-12T12:21:41.126Z
Story chronology: 2026-11-12T12:02:58.000Z
Retrieved: 2026-11-13T16:48:49.664Z
Publisher: Tech & Business (techandbusiness.org)