Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’re Not Keeping It Secret

Dozens of companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds. They say it’s anonymous, but the data shows how personal it is.

Businesses say their interest is in the patterns, not the identities, that the data reveals about consumers. They note that the information apps collect is tied not to someone’s name or phone number but to a unique ID. But those with access to the raw data — including employees or clients — could still identify a person without consent. They could follow someone they knew, by pinpointing a phone that regularly spent time at that person’s home address. Or, working in reverse, they could attach a name to an anonymous dot, by seeing where the device spent nights and using public records to figure out who lived there. read more »

How Much Could the 1MDB Scandal Cost Goldman Sachs?

A huge fraud at a Malaysian investment fund has cast a harsh light on Goldman Sachs. But how much could the scandal cost the firm?

Wall Street has been trying to estimate the amount of legal penalties and settlements Goldman may pay after United States prosecutors unveiled a guilty plea by a former senior Goldman Sachs investment banker and charged a second banker.

The affair appears to have taken its toll on Goldman’s stock. Its shares are down 20 percent since the Justice Department’s charges were revealed. By comparison, bank stocks as a whole are down 6 percent, and shares of Morgan Stanley, Goldman’s rival, have fallen nearly 10 percent. read more »

Six Michigan Doctors Charged in $464 Million Insurance and Opioid Scheme

Six Michigan doctors have been charged with insurance fraud and unnecessarily prescribing opioids to patients in a $464 million scheme, according to court documents filed this week by federal prosecutors.

The 56-count indictment, filed on Tuesday and made public on Thursday, named Dr. Rajendra Bothra, 77, of Bloomfield Hills, who owned and operated the Pain Center USA in Warren and Eastpointe, Mich., and the Interventional Pain Center in Warren. The other five doctors were employed by the clinics, which catered to patients with joint and spinal injuries.

As part of the scheme, Dr. Bothra “sought to bill insurance companies for the maximum number of services and procedures possible with no regard to the patients’ needs,” the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Michigan, which filed the charges, said in a statement on Thursday. read more »