A controversial data firm is selling abortion clinic visitors' location data

Planned Parenthood clinic.
(Image credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

A controversial location data firm known as SafeGraph is selling information revealing where groups of people visiting family planning or abortion clinics such as Planned Parenthood came from, "how long they stayed there, and where they then went afterwards," Vice's Motherboard reports.

The week's worth of data Motherboard purchased from SafeGraph for just over $160 included over 600 U.S. Planned Parenthood locations. With such information readily accessible, the U.S. could "see an increase in vigilante activity or forms of surveillance and harassment against those seeking or providing abortions," Motherboard posits.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Brigid Kennedy

Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.