The New York Times has been reporting on how your smartphone can cost you privacy.

Most recently, our Opinion desk published One Nation, Tracked, an investigation into the location data industry that shows how companies quietly collect and profit off the precise movements of smartphone users.

But there’s a new vulnerability coming.

Apple is including a new chip in its iPhone 11s that will enable ultra wideband wireless communication with other phones and smart devices. More phone makers, like Samsung, appear ready to launch their own UWB. (UWB chips are already in N.F.L. players’ shoulder pads, to gather metrics and inform computer animated replays.)

The new short-range technology could bring a host of conveniences: unlocking your car or front door as you approach and relocking when you exit, speeding phone-to-phone transfers and the like. All faster than Bluetooth.

But it could also make your location trackable even more precisely. In stores, retailers could “see” where you paused in their aisles, possibly keeping track of not only what you bought, but what you may have considered.

And if past experience is a guide, law enforcement could also draw on the data.

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time. — Melina

Thank you

To Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford for the break from the news. Andrea Kannapell, the Briefings editor, wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.

• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode revisits an interview with President Trump that included the publisher of The Times, A.G. Sulzberger.

• Here’s our Mini Crossword, and a clue: Half of 2020 (four letters). You can find all our puzzles here.

• Each day, our editors collect some of the most interesting or delightful facts to appear in that day’s coverage. Here are 79 favorites from last year.