Taylor Swift asks jet tracker to stop. Who is UCF student Jack Sweeney?

University of Central Florida student and jet tracker of the rich and famous Jack Sweeney has aggravated another billionaire.

Taylor Swift's attorneys have sent letters to the 21-year-old asking him to stop posting flight information about the pop megastar's departures and landings and have threatened legal action. For years, Sweeney has been tracking the private jets of Russian oligarchs and multiple public figures such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Drake, and Swift and sharing it online.

So far Sweeney is shaking it off. “This information is already out there,” he told the Washington Post. “Her team thinks they can control the world.”

Sweeney already faced down one billionaire in 2022 when he refused to remove his then-Twitter account tracking Elon Musk's jet, which Musk once referred to as "assassination coordinates." After he bought the company, Musk banned Sweeney's accounts.

Who is the young man seriously annoying some of the world's most powerful people?

Who is Jack Sweeney?

Sweeney is a junior at the University of Central Florida pursuing a Bachelor of Science in information technology and computer science. Born in Clermont to a technician for American Airlines and a teacher, the Tampa Bay Times reported, he learned how to track his father's flights as a boy and later learned how to code and expand his efforts.

In his senior year of high school in 2020 and bored during the pandemic, he created a Twitter bot to automatically gather and post the comings and goings of Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's Gulfstream (Sweeney was a fan).

A year later, the then-richest man in the world DMed the new college sophomore and asked him to stop as it was a security risk. After days of exchanges in which Musk offered $5,000 and Sweeney countered with $50,000 or a Tesla Model 3, Musk blocked him.

The encounter made national news, and Sweeney created more accounts to track private jets of billionaires such as  Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Cuban, Donald Trump, Bill Gates and entertainers and sports figures such as Swift, Kenny Chesney, baseball player Alex Rodriquez (A-Rod) and the rapper Drake. He also tracked NASA and experimental aircraft.

The resulting social media posts included departing and arriving cities and often the cost of fuel used and the amount of CO2 emissions created. The information from his accounts has been used to shame celebrities and other famous people for their "disproportionately high" impact on climate change.

He also set up a hub webpage and founded Ground Control to spearhead "advancements in flight tracking software."

After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 he created @RUOligarchJets to track the movements of about 30 Russian oligarchs, although he admitted info from Russia was sketchy.

At the end of that year, after Musk had purchased Twitter, he claimed that a stalker using Sweeney's info had endangered his son and he permanently suspended all of Sweeney's accounts and then changed the company rules to suspend anyone else sharing real-time location information. He also banned several reporters from The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Voice of America and other publications who had been reporting on the Sweeney-Musk saga.

Los Angeles Police could not find any evidence the stalker had used the jet tracking account.

Sweeney later started new accounts for Musk (@ElonJetNextDay) and others on Twitter, now renamed X, but with a 24-hour delay to get around the new anti-doxxing restrictions.

The college sophomore was named one of Forbes' 30 Under 30 for 2024, under the Consumer Technology category.

Tracking DeSantis: The Florida college student who tracked Elon Musk's jet on Twitter is now tracking Ron DeSantis

Which celebrities does Jack Sweeney track?

With multiple accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Bluesky, time-delayed accounts on X, and a Discord server, Sweeney currently tracks Musk, Gov. Ron DeSantis, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, and an assortment of celebrities including Tom Cruise, A-Rod, Kenny Chesney, Dan Bilzerian, Blake Shelton and John Travolta. An account tracking former president Donald Trump also posts on Trump's own social media, Truth Social, although it does not update regularly.

He also still pokes Musk. On Tuesday, after Musk posted on X that Sweeney was an awful human being and that Swift was "right to be concerned," Sweeney responded with a reminder than Musk threatened to sue him a year ago.

Sweeney followed that up with a post linking to a Business Insider story about Musk's ex Grimes tracking his jets to serve him with custody papers, with the comment, "So now we know why."

When did Taylor Swift's attorneys contact Jack Sweeney?

According to the Washington Post, Swift's attorneys sent a cease-and-desist letter in December, threatening "legal remedies" if he didn't stop "stalking and harassing" her and causing her and her family and heightening her "constant state of fear for her personal safety."

“While this may be a game to you, or an avenue that you hope will earn you wealth or fame, it is a life-or-death matter for our Client,” attorney Katie Wright Morrone wrote in a letter shared with the Post.

Swift, 34, who on Sunday became the artist with the most "album of the year" Grammys ever on the same night she announced her new album, has been the target of multiple stalkers over the years, including one who was arrested three times in five days last month outside the artist's New York City home.

He received another letter in January threatening legal action. Swift's spokesperson Tree Paine told USA TODAY in a statement, "We cannot comment on any ongoing police investigation but can confirm the timing of stalkers suggests a connection. His posts tell you exactly when and where she would be."

Swift's legions of fans may use it more than stalkers do, as they comb over everything remotely Swift-related to find clues about the singer-songwriter's upcoming albums, special promotions and other events. Most recently Swifties have feverishly been going over flight details to try and work out if she'll be able to make it from a concert in Tokyo to the Super Bowl to watch partner and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.

Sweeney told the Post that the information was public data and offered only a suggestion as to which cities she might be in, similar to a concert (or NFL) schedule.

He also mentioned she had been under fire in December for her flights' excessive CO2 emissions in an analysis that labeled her "the biggest celebrity CO2e polluter of this year." The spokesperson said that Swift wasn't responsible as she often loaned her jet out to other people, and she bought more than double the carbon credits needed for her latest tour to offset her own travel.

Sweeny's X account @SwiftJetNextDay currently tracks her jets with a 24-hour delay, although he also maintains accounts on Reddit, Bluesky and other social media.

How does jet tracker Jack Sweeney get his information?

All planes and jets broadcast their locations for safety and official tracking. But you don't have to be an air traffic controller to get that signal, you can just get an inexpensive and easy-to-find ADS-B receiver.

Sweeney uses data from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a source open and available to the public, and a large global community of aviation hobbyists using ADS-B receivers who are not restricted by FAA rules. Sweeney told the Tampa Bay Times that sometimes aviation officials or the Department of Defense will come to the community website ADS-B Exchange to fill in gaps in their own data.

He also makes occasional public records requests to get registration documents to verify ownership.

On Monday, the day the Washington Post broke the story of Swift's legal notices, he posted on X copies of Swift's paperwork on one of her jets. "Look what came in the mail today from the FAA," he said.

"Hope you rot in jail," someone commented underneath.

Is it legal? Taylor Swift takes on jet tracker Jack Sweeney. Can you legally track a private plane?

Can private jet owners keep their flight info private?

The FAA allows people to request that their flight info stay hidden through their Privacy ICAO aircraft address (PIA) program. Something like requesting an unlisted phone number, the service assigns a different, temporary identification number for an aircraft that is provided to flight-tracking sites such as FlightAware.

According to the Washington Post, Swift's information is currently blocked. But PIAs are only available for flights that start and end "within the sovereign and territorial airspace of the United States," the FAA says, so flights such as Swift's travel to Tokyo and back for her weekend concert could still be tracked.

And PIAs are not foolproof if you're used to someone's habits. Musk used PIAs but Sweeney had no problem continuing to track him.

“It took some work, but there are ways to find him,” Sweeney told the Tampa Bay Times. “He’s the only one who uses the same three airports.”

Mary Walrath-Holdridge, USA TODAY, contributed to this article.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Taylor Swift, Elon Musk annoyed at Florida student jet tracking