Location data for sale... "FCC can't punish us!"

[UltraBudgie]

Under the GDPR they could only do that if they were authorized by the persons the data was about, as the data for one service cannot be used for anything else unless they are authorized to do it.

That's right, I think. In Europe, under the GDPR, data can be collected without explicit consent, however it must be anonymized or encrypted before aggregation, and privacy laws still apply (according to this answer, anyway). This came into focus during covid with health tracking in the public interest and such. That's different from the situation in the USA and other countries, which are more flexible with where in the chain minimization occurs. It's a legal thicket with GDPR, what counts as personal data, anonymized data, and aggregate data, at each step of the process. Especially when dealing with hierarchies of aggregation and correlation. More info here. Consult a lawyer haha.

Here is scary chart with claims about what people are willing to accept:



More questionable statistics here. I frankly find it hard to believe, but then I look at how most people don't seem to give a damn and I wonder.