Phone data reveal who is social distancing (and not)

If you have a smartphone, you’re probably contributing to a massive coronavirus surveillance system.

And it’s revealing where Americans have — and haven’t — been practicing social distancing.

On Tuesday, a company called Unacast that collects and analyzes phone GPS location data launched a “Social Distancing Scoreboard” that grades, county by county, which residents are changing behavior at the urging of health officials. It uses the reduction in the total distance we travel as a rough index for whether we’re staying put at home.

Comparing the nation’s mass movements from March 20 to an average, Washington, D.C., gets an A, while Wyoming as a whole earns an F.

How do they know that? Efforts to track public health during the coronavirus pandemic are a reminder of the many ways phones reveal our personal lives, both as individuals and in the aggregate. Unacast’s location data comes from games, shopping and utility apps that tens of millions of Americans have installed on their phones — information the company normally analyzes for retailers, real estate firms and marketers.

Google also collects and shares where we go. Long before the coronavirus, the Google Maps app has included a live read of how busy popular destinations are, based on location data. Facebook’s Instagram, too, lets you see other people who’ve recently shared updates from places. Both tools are useful for anyone who wants to practice social distancing and avoid spaces that are busy for a jog or fresh air during shelter-inplace orders.

There’s no evidence that the U.S. government is using phones to enforce stay-athome orders or track patients. But privacy is often the first civil right on the chopping block when public health and national security are at risk. The Washington

Post reported last week that the U.S. government is in talks with tech companies about using anonymous location data to combat the coronavirus.

Unacast assigns letter grades to counties and states based on how much residents have changed their movements on a specific date compared to what’s typical on that day of the week. If many people in an area used to commute daily to work but now are leaving the house only for visits to the grocery store, the data would show a big reduction in travel distance.

Overall, the company gives the United States a B, for a 32% decline in average distance traveled.