The Social Distancing Scorecard

A company is analyzing phone GPS location data to create a Social Distancing Scoreboard that grades, county by county, which residents are changing their behavior.

The scorecard uses the reduction in the total distance users travel as an index for whether we’re staying in one place.

Geoffrey Fowler: “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. It’s part of a shadowy world of location tracking that consumers often have little idea is going on.”