X-Mode

A mid-tier location data broker that occupied a controversial niche supplying raw geolocation data to both commercial and government clients before its rebranding.

X-Mode Social, Inc. was a location intelligence company founded in 2013 and headquartered in Reston, Virginia. The company built its data collection infrastructure by embedding SDKs into third-party mobile applications, allowing it to harvest precise GPS-level location data from tens of millions of devices globally. This data was then aggregated, analyzed, and sold to a wide range of customers including advertisers, financial institutions, hedge funds, and notably U.S. government contractors and intelligence agencies — a practice that drew significant public scrutiny. X-Mode gained widespread notoriety in late 2020 when Vice/Motherboard published investigations revealing that the company was selling location data to U.S. military contractors, including those supporting Special Operations Command. Following these revelations, Apple and Google pressured app developers to remove the X-Mode SDK from their applications, effectively cutting off the company's primary data collection pipeline. The company also faced scrutiny from lawmakers and privacy advocates over its data practices and the lack of meaningful user consent. In 2021, X-Mode was acquired by Digital Envoy and subsequently rebranded as Outlogic, continuing to operate in the location data and intelligence space under the new brand. The X-Mode brand itself was retired as part of this transition, representing an attempt to distance the business from the controversies that had plagued its predecessor. The company's story became a landmark case in ongoing debates about mobile location data privacy, the data broker industry, and the sale of consumer data to government entities.