Broker profile

Foursquare

A location intelligence and audience-data company headquartered in New York, operated by Foursquare Labs, Inc. Best known for its consumer check-in app, but its real business since the April 2020 all-stock merger with Factual Inc. is enterprise location data. It licenses Places (100M+ points of interest), Movement (snap-to-place visit data), and Pinpoint (450+ audience segments) to advertisers, retailers, and analytics customers. Founded in 2009. Raised ~$412M-$448M across 11 rounds. Registered with the CPPA data-broker registry.

Manual removal guide Visit foursquare.com

Foursquare overview

At a glance

Quick facts

Privacy Risk

LimitedModerateSubstantialExtensive

Data published: Moderate
Re-listing frequency: Occasional
Complaint record: Pattern of complaints
Opt-out friction: Moderate
Operator opacity: Fully disclosed
Prior data incidents: None documented

Each broker is scored 1 to 4 across the six dimensions above; higher means more exposure, and the overall gauge is their average.

What each dimension means

Data published: how much and how sensitive the personal data they put out.
Re-listing frequency: how quickly you reappear after opting out.
Complaint record: the volume and pattern of complaints across BBB, Trustpilot, and Sitejabber. No listing, or a listing with no reviews, counts against the broker.
Opt-out friction: how hard the removal process is to complete.
Operator opacity: how hidden the operating company and its principals are.
Prior data incidents: history of breaches or leaks of the data they hold.

Category: Location intelligence · audience data
Operating entity: Foursquare Labs, Inc.
Founded: Mar 11, 2009
Headquarters: New York, NY
Funding: ~$412M-$448M total
Factual merger: Apr 6, 2020
CA data broker reg: ID 186737
FCRA covered?: No

Background

Company history

Foursquare's product today is enterprise location intelligence. It licenses point-of-interest data, foot-traffic visit data, and audience segments to advertisers, retailers, and analytics customers. The consumer-facing Swarm app still operates, while City Guide shut down (the app on December 15, 2024 and the web version on April 28, 2025). Consumer apps have been a small share of the business since the April 2020 all-stock merger with Factual Inc. consolidated Foursquare's pivot to a B2B data company. Location data is collected from the owned apps and from third-party apps that embed the Movement SDK (formerly Pilgrim SDK).

Original product: Check-in app
Founded: March 11, 2009
Factual merger: April 6, 2020 (all-stock)
CA data broker reg: ID 186737
May 2024 layoffs: 105 employees (~25%)

Foursquare launched at SXSW in March 2009 as a check-in app competing with Gowalla and later Yelp's location features. The consumer product split into Foursquare City Guide and Swarm in 2014. Through the 2010s the company gradually pivoted toward enterprise data licensing, which became dominant after the April 2020 merger with Factual - itself a major location data broker that owned the Geopulse and Engine products. The combined company kept the Foursquare name.

Today Foursquare describes itself as the "world's most trusted and independent location technology platform," a positioning calibrated against the fact that the only larger location-data competitors are Google and Apple - companies whose primary business model is not location data alone. The current product lineup is Places (POI database), Movement (foot-traffic analytics), Pinpoint (audience targeting), Attribution (ad measurement), and Studio (geospatial analytics, formerly the acquired Unfolded product). The Movement SDK is embedded by partner app developers to collect location signals in exchange for analytics or monetization features. The Foursquare Rewards Points program was retired April 21, 2023.

Foursquare is a different kind of "data broker" than the people-search brokers in this directory. Whitepages, Spokeo, and the others publish consumer profiles you can search for free; Foursquare's data is paywalled and targeted at enterprise advertisers, retailers, and analytics customers. The privacy concern is also different. Your device-level location history and visit patterns are being aggregated and sold, not your home address or relatives. Closest comparisons in this directory are Acxiom (B2B marketing data) and ZoomInfo (B2B contact data) - all three are paywalled enterprise data brokers, with different data types.

June 2022 NAI Enhanced Standards commitment. On June 22, 2022, Foursquare joined Cuebiq and Precisely PlaceIQ in committing to the NAI Enhanced Standards for Precise Location Information. The standards prohibit the use, sale, or transfer of precise location data tied to religious worship, sensitive healthcare (cancer, HIV/AIDS, fertility, abortion, mental health, ER), military bases, LGBTQ+ identification, correctional facilities, immigration / refugee services, welfare assistance centers, and places intended for children under 16.

Data Published

Data types

Location + audience data

Timestamped mobile-device location coordinates (latitude / longitude)
Mobile Advertising Identifier (MAID) for the device (Android Advertising ID; iOS IDFA when permitted)
Snap-to-place inferences: which physical business or POI the visit corresponds to
Visit metadata: arrival time, dwell duration, visit frequency, repeat-visitor flag
Visit chains: sequences of places visited in a single day or trip
Approximate / coarse location when the user has disabled precise location
Foot-traffic aggregates (Movement product): visits per location, demographic mix where modelable
Audience segments derived from visit patterns (Pinpoint): Categories, Chains/Brands, Lifestyle Affinities, Loyalists - 450+ segments
Attribution joins: whether a device that saw a digital ad subsequently visited a target location
Points-of-interest reference data (Places): name, address, category, hours, contact - the public business info layer, ~100M POIs globally

How the data is sourced: Foursquare's own Swarm app (and City Guide, until it shut down) collects location with OS-level consent prompts. The Movement SDK (formerly Pilgrim SDK) is embedded by partner app developers; the SDK detects visits in the background even when the partner app is not in the foreground, subject to OS permission. The Factual merger added a longstanding partner network and reference POI database that pre-dated Foursquare's enterprise pivot. Audience segments are built post-hoc from the visit history rather than from questionnaires.

Foursquare's stated data-protection measures: per the consumer-services privacy policy and the CLO Q&A, Foursquare states it does not sell raw lat / long coordinates, obfuscates exact visit times, removes inferred home and work visits from data deliveries, and exempts the NAI-listed sensitive POI categories. These are company-stated controls; the Proskin v. Foursquare complaint (2023, dismissed) disputed how completely those controls work in practice.

Contact

Contacts & links

Foursquare Labs, Inc.

Operating entity: Foursquare Labs, Inc. (Delaware)
Headquarters: 50 W 23rd Street, 8th Floor New York, NY 10010-5272
Phone: (646) 760-6342
Privacy email: privacy@foursquare.com
Your Privacy Choices: foursquare.com/products/your-privacy-choices/
Data-request portal: app.foursquare.com/data-requests
Privacy service desk: foursquare.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/25
Privacy Center: foursquare.com/legal/privacy-center/
CA data broker registration: cppa.ca.gov/data_broker_registry/
General website: https://foursquare.com/
CA Data Broker registry: Foursquare Labs, Inc. · the filing answers yes to collecting precise geolocation, which for a location-data broker is the whole product · 2024: 76,321 requests to delete - 76,081 complied in whole, 240 denied, 10-day median - cppa.ca.gov/data_broker_registry/

Network

Sister brands

Single corporate entity

Foursquare Labs, Inc. operates everything under a single corporate umbrella. The consumer apps and the enterprise data products share the same data backend, so one opt-out covers the sale and sharing of data tied to the advertising ID you submit across all of them. Key sub-brands and folded-in acquisitions are listed below.

Cross-category comparison: within this directory, the closest analogs are Acxiom (B2B marketing-segment data) and ZoomInfo (B2B professional-contact data). All three sell paywalled aggregated data to enterprise customers rather than publishing consumer-facing profiles. Foursquare's data type (device-level location and visit history) is materially more sensitive than the work-contact or marketing-segment data the other two specialize in.

Single-entity broker

Foursquare is one corporate entity (Foursquare Labs, Inc.) that operates Swarm, Places, Pinpoint, Movement SDK, and Studio (and ran City Guide until it shut down) under a shared data backend. A single opt-out through app.foursquare.com/data-requests should cover the sale and sharing of data tied to the one advertising ID you submit across all of these products, so you don't need a separate opt-out per product. It doesn't delete anything, cover your other devices' IDs, or close a Foursquare account. Deleting stored history takes a request to privacy@foursquare.com or the privacy service desk, and account deletion has its own flow in the removal guide. The opt-out covers Foursquare-collected data only and does not extend to other location-data brokers (Cuebiq, PlaceIQ, Near Intelligence successors, etc.) - opt outs at those companies are separate.

Foursquare stands alone on the broker mapExplore the full map

Reputation

Trust signals

B2B-skewed reviews

Foursquare's review presence is split between consumers (frustrated with the City Guide / Swarm apps or with business-listing claims) and enterprise B2B customers (rating the location-data product on G2 and Capterra, which skew more positive). The consumer-facing aggregators below capture the non-B2B sentiment.

Trustpilotfoursquare.com · 72 reviews2.1 / 5As of 2026-05View reviews ↗

Better Business BureauFoursquare Labs, Inc. · not accredited · 5 complaints / 3yrD- ratingAs of 2026-05Find on BBB ↗

SmartCustomer (formerly Sitejabber)foursquare.com · 28 reviews3.4 / 5As of 2026-05View reviews ↗

Difficulty claiming or correcting a business listing in the Places database
Rewards Points program shutdown (April 21, 2023) with short redemption window leaving unredeemed points stranded
Location data still showing up in partner-app behavior after uninstalling Foursquare's own apps (Movement SDK reach is opaque to end-users)
Privacy ticket replies running past the soft "few business days" target
The BBB D- rating is driven mainly by the company not responding to the small handful of complaints filed, not by complaint volume; Foursquare is not BBB-accredited

Common complaint themes from consumers

Litigation

Litigation history

No active class actions

Two consumer privacy class actions have been brought against Foursquare and resolved. A 2010s iOS contact scraping case with several defendants, Opperman v. Path, settled for $5.3M across all defendants. A 2023 Massachusetts class action, Proskin v. Foursquare Labs, alleged that Foursquare sold Pilgrim SDK location data to Uber and others. The plaintiff voluntarily dismissed it three months after filing, six weeks after Foursquare moved to dismiss. No FTC enforcement action or state Attorney General consent decree has been recorded against Foursquare Labs, Inc. as of the last updated date.

Proskin v. Foursquare Labs, Inc.

Dismissed

U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts · 3:23-cv-30078 · Filed Jul 24, 2023 · Voluntarily dismissed Oct 26, 2023

Filed: Jul 24, 2023
Judge: Mark G. Mastroianni
Nature of suit: Fraud · $5M demand
Voluntarily dismissed: Oct 26, 2023

The complaint alleged that Foursquare profited by selling consumers' timestamped geolocation data collected via the Pilgrim SDK embedded in third-party apps, with the data sold downstream to companies including Uber. Foursquare moved to dismiss on September 14, 2023, and the plaintiff filed a notice of voluntary dismissal on October 26, 2023, before any ruling on that motion. The docket records no class settlement or notice to class members.

Opperman et al. v. Path, Inc. et al.

Settled

N.D. Cal. (consolidated multi-defendant action) · ~$5.3M aggregate settlement · Foursquare among multiple named defendants

Theory: iOS Address Book scraping (~2010-2012)
Co-defendants: Path · Twitter · Yelp · Instagram · Apple · others
Settlement total: ~$5.3M aggregate across settling defendants
Notes: Per-defendant share not disclosed

A 7-million-class putative action alleging that the named iOS apps (Path was the lead defendant, with Foursquare among the others) accessed users' Address Book contacts without consent. After several years of consolidated litigation the case resolved with an aggregate settlement of roughly $5.3M across the settling defendants; the per-defendant allocation is not publicly broken out in available sources. This is the earliest documented consumer-privacy litigation naming Foursquare and predates the company's pivot to B2B location intelligence.

Harvard Journal of Law & Technology - case digest ->

Related and contextual matters:

BoardActive Corp. v. Foursquare Labs, Inc. (D. Del. 1:22-cv-00597, filed May 2022) is a commercial patent-infringement case asserting five location-time-advertising patents. A March 2023 ruling exists; the case is outside the consumer-privacy scope of this directory and not summarized here.
No FTC enforcement against Foursquare Labs, Inc. as of the last-updated date - notable given the FTC's 2024 enforcement wave against location-data brokers (Mobilewalla, X-Mode/Outlogic, InMarket Media, Gravy Analytics). The NAI Enhanced Standards commitment in June 2022 predates and may have anticipated that regulatory wave.

FAQ

Q & A

Common questions

Is Foursquare a data broker?

Yes. Foursquare Labs, Inc. is registered as a data broker on the California Data Broker Registry under registration ID 186737. Its primary business is enterprise location intelligence, licensing Places (100M+ global points of interest), Movement (foot-traffic visit data), and Pinpoint (450+ audience segments) to advertisers, retailers, and analytics customers. The consumer-facing Swarm app is a small remaining surface, since City Guide shut down in 2024 and 2025; the data licensing business is the rest.

Who owns Foursquare?

Foursquare Labs, Inc. is a privately held New York company headquartered at 50 W 23rd Street, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10010. It launched on March 11, 2009. The April 2020 all-stock merger with Factual Inc. pivoted Foursquare from a consumer check-in app into a B2B location-intelligence company. Total disclosed funding is roughly $412M to $448M across 11 rounds per Crunchbase / PitchBook.

What information does Foursquare collect?

Foursquare collects timestamped mobile-device location coordinates (latitude/longitude) and Mobile Advertising Identifiers (MAIDs) from its own Swarm app (and City Guide, before it shut down) and from third-party apps that embed the Movement SDK (formerly Pilgrim SDK). It uses snap-to-place inference to derive store and brand visits, dwell times, and visit frequency. From those signals it generates 450+ Pinpoint audience segments grouped by Categories, Chains/Brands, Lifestyle Affinities, and Loyalists. Foursquare states that it does not sell raw lat/long, obfuscates exact visit times, and removes inferred home and work visits from data deliveries.

Can I remove myself from Foursquare?

Yes, but the form at app.foursquare.com/data-requests takes opt-out of sale, opt-out of sharing, and limit-use requests only, with no deletion option. For deletion, use the Foursquare privacy service desk at foursquare.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/25 or email privacy@foursquare.com. To opt out of the sale or sharing of location data tied to a specific device, you need to provide your Mobile Advertising Identifier (on Android, find it in Settings then Google then Ads; iOS doesn't show it in Settings, so on an iPhone email privacy@foursquare.com instead and leave your tracking settings as they are until the request is in). See our Foursquare removal guide for step-by-step instructions.

How long does Foursquare take to remove information?

Foursquare does not publish a specific processing SLA. As a California-registered data broker subject to CCPA / CPRA, it must respond to verified deletion requests within 45 days, extendable to 90 days. The Atlassian service-desk portal issues a ticket number for tracking; if you don't see a response within the statutory window, the CPPA's data-broker complaint pipeline is the escalation path.

Is Foursquare covered by FCRA?

No. Foursquare is not a Consumer Reporting Agency under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Its products are advertising and location-analytics services, not consumer-screening services, and its data is not FCRA-permissible for employment, tenant, credit, or insurance decisions. The applicable frameworks are CCPA / CPRA in California (Foursquare is on the state data-broker registry) and the NAI Enhanced Standards for Precise Location Information Solution Providers, which Foursquare committed to in June 2022.

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Last updated:

September 10, 2026