SafeGraph LLC is a private, venture-backed 'data-as-a-service' company that sells aggregated places and foot-traffic data (Places, Geometry, Spend, and formerly Patterns) built from third-party mobile-device panels and licensed data, not collected directly from consumers. Its own privacy policy states it licenses information such as advertising identifiers (Apple IDFA, Google Advertising ID) from third parties, does not correlate that data with names, phone numbers or emails, and states products it sells contain no personally identifying 'Information' as it defines the term, and that it does not sell sensitive information (including geolocation) or products derived from geolocation that can identify a person's location. SafeGraph's own product documentation describes its (now-discontinued) Patterns dataset as 'derived from a panel of opted-in mobile devices.' The company is backed by Sapphire Ventures, which led a $45M Series B in March 2021, per SafeGraph's own blog. In 2022, following a Senate letter from Senator Elizabeth Warren and thirteen colleagues criticizing SafeGraph (and Placer.ai) for selling cellphone-based location data tied to visits to abortion clinics, SafeGraph stated it had removed all visit statistics tied to businesses categorized as family planning centers. No FTC or state-AG order, judgment, or independent security audit specific to SafeGraph was found in this research.
TRACK RECORD
1 ENFORCEMENT ACTION
[2022-07-07]
Per Senator Elizabeth Warren's official Senate press release, following a May 2022 letter from Warren and thirteen Senate colleagues criticizing SafeGraph and Placer.ai for collecting and selling cellphone-based location data of people who visited abortion clinics, SafeGraph stated it had removed all visit-related statistics tied to businesses categorized under the family-planning-centers NAICS code, making that data inaccessible from its platform.
SafeGraph's privacy policy states it does not collect information directly from natural persons to build its products, but instead aggregates data from third-party sources and may license information from third parties such as mobile advertising identifiers (Apple IDFA, Google Advertising ID), while stating it does not correlate that licensed data with names, phone numbers, or email addresses.
SafeGraph's own blog post, authored by CEO Auren Hoffman, states the company's $45M Series B funding round was led by Sapphire Ventures, naming Sapphire partner Cathy Gao and CEO Nino Marakovic as the company's new investors.
SafeGraph's privacy policy states the company does not sell sensitive information (including geolocation data) or products derived from geolocation data that can identify a person's location, does not process or share sensitive information for targeted advertising, and does not use sensitive information to infer characteristics about a consumer.
Per Senator Elizabeth Warren's official Senate press release, following a May 2022 letter from Warren and thirteen Senate colleagues criticizing SafeGraph and Placer.ai for collecting and selling cellphone-based location data of people who visited abortion clinics, SafeGraph stated it had removed all visit-related statistics tied to businesses categorized under the family-planning-centers NAICS code, making that data inaccessible from its platform.
SafeGraph's own product documentation states its Patterns dataset (visitor and demographic aggregations for U.S. points of interest, since discontinued) was derived from a panel of opted-in mobile devices, describing the underlying device-panel tracking mechanism used to build its foot-traffic products.