In October 2019, NBC tech correspondent Jacob Ward gave me his cell phone number. That was the whole assignment. One number, and a couple of days to see what it told me about a man I had never met.
His producer, Chiara Sottile, needed to shoot the on-camera piece on Friday, October 18, so it could make air. I asked whether we could push it two weeks. I wanted to run his number through a few real marketing campaigns and let it trickle through the matching systems, because it usually takes two to three weeks from the time a number goes into the machinery before it shows up everywhere. The answer was no. Tomorrow was the only day. So we worked with what we had.
What one phone number gave me
The phone number led to his social profiles. His social profiles led to his tweets. And his tweets made one thing obvious: this guy loves the outdoors. On camera I put it plainly: we know you like hunting.
So I picked the meeting spot from that. We met at Lost Coast Outfitters on Jackson Street in San Francisco, an outdoor shop. Jake walked in and asked how I knew he'd want to come there. I told him he gave me his phone number. That was the only piece of information I started with.
The night before, I sent Chiara a diagram of everything we could trace directly from Jake's number, plus a separate view from Acxiom, one of the big data brokers. From those details you can trace pretty much everything else that is public about a person.
The segment aired on NBC Nightly News on Sunday, November 10, 2019. In the same piece, Patrick Jackson from Disconnect used the number to find a building Jake lived in at 24 and the names of his family members. Jake's own line from the piece is the one I remember: his phone number is basically a homing beacon.
Why this matters
I run ads for a living. I'm not telling you this from the outside. The phone number is the key that ties your loyalty card, your email, your purchases, your social accounts, and your address history together. You buy a hat at an outfitter and give them your number at checkout, and that purchase can get matched with your email and shared with partners. The discount at the grocery store isn't free. You pay for it with data.
Here's the part people miss. What I showed on TV wasn't hacking. It was ordinary lookups and ordinary marketing data. Anybody with a budget and a little patience can do it.
I wrote about this years ago in All Your Data Are Belong to Us, and I posted the clip back then as Do you know exactly what companies do when you give them your phone number? Seven years later, the problem is bigger, not smaller.
What it looks like now: Flock cameras and data brokers
In 2019 the identifier was your phone number. Now it is also your license plate.
Flock Safety sells automated license plate reader cameras to police departments. The cameras log plates and vehicle details as cars drive by, and the thousands of agencies that use Flock can search and share that data across jurisdictions, according to MPR News. Police credit it with finding missing people and suspects. The problem is where the data goes.
- NPR reported that several California cities found their local plate data had been shared with Flock's national network without city officials knowing, and that federal agencies including Border Patrol had searched it. NPR, February 2026
- In Columbus, Ohio, a police audit found 15,577 searches potentially related to immigration on the city's network, and the city had to lock out agencies with ICE agreements by hand. Columbus Dispatch
- Flock announced in August 2026 that it is cutting default retention from 30 days to seven and letting customers limit which kinds of searches outside agencies can run. MPR News
- Cities are leaving anyway. Secure Justice counted 214 cities and counties that have dropped Flock since 2021, 90 of them in August 2026 alone. Ars Technica
Same pattern as Jake's phone number. One identifier that seems harmless on its own. A network that links it to everything else. And people who had no idea how far it traveled.
Data brokers haven't gone anywhere either. California now has more than 600 registered data brokers in its deletion system, which tells you how big this industry is. California's DROP platform lets residents send one deletion request to all of them, and brokers had to start processing those requests on August 1, 2026.
What I'd do if I were you
- Stop handing out your real number by default. Use a second number (a Google Voice-style number) for loyalty programs, checkout forms, and anything that isn't a person you actually want to hear from.
- Don't use texted codes as your only login protection. Your number gets shared everywhere, so it's a weak key. Use an authenticator app or a hardware key where you can.
- Look yourself up. Search your own number and see what comes back. That's what a stranger sees.
- If you live in California, use DROP. One request goes to every registered data broker.
- Go to your city council meetings. Whether your town uses plate readers, how long it keeps the data, and who it shares with are local decisions. In a lot of the cities that changed course, it started with residents asking questions.
- If you're a marketer, act like it's your data. I use this stuff every day. Collect what you need, be honest about it, and don't sell people out for a match rate.
Jake gave me one number and I found his hobby, picked a store he'd like, and could have kept going. That was 2019, with a deadline and no budget. Think about what a company or an agency can do today with your phone number and your plate.