Surprise, surprise: my online metadata actually reveals where I’ve been

In January 2014, documents provided by Edward Snowden showed that a Canadian spy agency used a unique identifier to follow thousands of Canadians as they moved about the country. The tracking all originated from an unnamed airport.

It got us thinking: how hard would it be to replicate this little experiment, writ small? Could I use one of my own online identifiers as a way to track my own movements through time and space? The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is: yes. It’s easy to do, and it’s revealing about what I do, when I do it, and where I go.