It probably wasn’t the best idea to sell their customers’ geolocation data to third-party aggregators in the first place.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Friday issued a total of $200 million in fines to the nation’s four largest cellular carriers for selling access to real-time consumer geolocation data to third-party aggregators.
AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile were issued fines for “apparently” disclosing user location information to a third party without customer authorization.
T-Mobile faces the highest penalty with a proposed fine of more than $91 million. AT&T and Verizon face proposed fines of more than $57 million and $48 million, respectively, while Sprint faces a proposed fine of more than $12 million.
Back in January, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai stated that “one or more” U.S. carriers might be fined over illegal data practices after an investigation by the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau found certain companies “apparently violated” federal law.
The data selling practices were discovered via a series of reports in 2018. Each company had been found selling access to customer location information to aggregators, who in turn sold that data to law enforcement agencies, bounty hunters, tracking services and alleged stalkers, among others.
Verizon, in turn, promised to end its data selling program in November 2018, a move emulated by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Spring in 2019. The companies gradually ended the practice, with all carriers cutting off the tap to aggregators in May 2019.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via AppleInsider and docs.fcc.gov