Auren Raphael Hoffman (born 1974) is an American entrepreneur, angel investor, author and CEO of SafeGraph, a firm that gathers location data from mobile devices and sells information about places and the movements of people.
[8] He then became chair of the Stonebrick Group through 2006, which sponsored networking events in the San Francisco area such as the Silicon Forum.
[31][32][33] From 2007 to 2013, Hoffman received significant backlash over the data collection practices and sale of individuals' personal information to advertisers by his company, RapLeaf.
[42] CNNMoney described RapLeaf as "selling your identity," and TechCrunch characterized its method of identifiable data extraction of Google and Microsoft employees as "creepy.
Beginning in 2020, Hoffman's company Safegraph received criticism for its practice of collecting and selling location data from mobile phones.
Public records requests by the Electronic Frontier Foundation revealed that between 2018 and 2020, Safegraph and its spin-off company Veraset sold or gave disaggregate, device-specific location data about millions of people to government agencies in the U.S.[45][46] In 2021, Google banned Safegraph from its Android app marketplace for violating its policies.
In May 2022, Motherboard was able to purchase data from Safegraph which revealed aggregate information about the movements of people who visited clinics that provide abortions, including Planned Parenthood.
The report generated concern among pro-choice advocates due to news about the impending decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which would make abortion illegal in many states.