VentureBeat reports on one company that is flying small drones over the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, CA, in order to determine cell-phone locations for targeted advertising. The small, unmanned aerial vehicles apparently are determining cell-phone location by “WiFi and cellular transmission signals.” The move is part of an experiment by Singapore-based location-marketing firm Adnear. Smriti Kataria, Adnear’s director of marketing and research, said the devices do not collect conversations or personally identifiable information but rather use cell-phone triangulation and signal strength to determine location. According to the report, “A mobile user needs to have an app open that is transmitting via cellular or WiFi for this mapping to occur.”
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