France: Announced CNIL study into geolocation data generated by mobile apps

On 13 June 2022, the French data protection authority (CNIL) announced an inquiry into geolocation data generation by mobile apps. The study aims to bring transparency to cross-app data flows and inform the public about the challenges related to geolocation data. The issue CNIL aims to investigate is how anonymised data such as location points and advertising identifiers from different apps can be aggregated to identify data subjects. Specifically, CNIL requested data on French citizens from data brokers that collect and sell anonymised data and will attempt to re-identify the individuals in question over 15 months.