• Fusion, Monday, February 15, 2016 8:29 AM

Fitting for this President's Day, Fusion reports on an interesting interview that Dstillery CEO Tom Phillips did with the radio show Marktplace about his company's ability to obtain the mobile device ID’s from the phones of Iowa caucus-goers to match them with their online profiles. Phillips said during the radio interview: "We watched each of the caucus locations for each party and we collected mobile device IDs... It’s a combination of data from the phone and data from other digital devices." Dstillery found some unusual tidbits: People who loved to grill or work on their lawns overwhelmingly voted for Trump in Iowa, according to Phillips.

How does Dstillery do it? Well, it obtains information from people’s phones via ad networks. As Fusion reports, "when you open an app or look at a browser page, there’s a very fast auction that happens where different advertisers bid to get to show you an ad. Their bid is based on how valuable they think you are, and to decide that, your phone sends them information about you, including, in many cases, an identifying code (that they’ve built a profile around) and your location information, down to your latitude and longitude."

Read the whole story at Fusion »