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FCC Questions U.S. Carriers on Phone Location Data Sales Practices

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The United States Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday sent out letters to Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint questioning the carriers about their data selling practices, reports Motherboard.

The carriers have been found selling real-time location information from customer devices to data aggregators, leading the location data to end up in the hands of private investigators, bounty hunters, law enforcement, credit companies, and more.

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Companies like LocationSmart and Zumigo obtained location information from U.S.-based cellular carriers and passed that data on to dozens of other companies, putting real-time customer location information in the hands of those who should not have it.

After coming under scrutiny for their location sharing practices, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile, pledged to stop doing so, but many had not actually stopped entirely as of January.

The FCC is now demanding answers from the four carriers. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel asked the heads of each company to provide details on whether the data aggregators were allowed to save phone location data and what steps carriers are going to take to make sure shared data has been deleted. From the letter to AT&T:
Real-time location information is sensitive data deserving the highest level of privacy protection. But it is evident from press reports that this data may have been sold without the explicit consent of consumers and without appropriate safeguards in place.

Accordingly, I appreciate your decision to end these location aggregation services by March of this year. To that end, I kindly request that you provide an update on your efforts and confirm by what date AT&T ended its arrangements to sell the location data of its customers. Please also confirm whether and by what date the company ended arrangements to sell assisted or augmented GPS data.

Finally, the public still has very little detail about how much geolocation data is being saved and stored-including in ways that may be far too accessible to others. Even de-anonymized location data may be combined with other information in ways that could make it personally identifiable again. Accordingly, please explain whether AT&T's agreements permitted aggregators or others to save and store location data they received from your company. If so, please confirm what steps your company is taking to ensure that these companies delete or destroy previously shared data and any derivative data. Alternatively, please explain what steps AT&T is taking to safeguard such data from use or onward sale that is inconsistent with consumers' original content.
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Similar letters were also sent to Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile, and all four carriers have been asked to provide responses to the FCC by May 15, 2019.

Article Link: FCC Questions U.S. Carriers on Phone Location Data Sales Practices
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2019/05/01/fcc-questions-us-carriers-location-data/
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Reactions: jeremiah256
T-Mobile: What? We didn't share any data?
AT&T: Well, we may have sold GPS data to select, trusted partners, but we told them not to share it! Promise!
Verizon: We are shocked, SHOCKED, that any data we collect could be sold on the open market!
Sprint: We're just glad you still consider to include us.

FCC: Thanks! Good enough for us! See ya at the next...uh...dinner.
 
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Reactions: poe diddley, old-wiz, nouveau_redneck and 22 others
370zulu said:
In a reasonable world, very public and very expensive penalties are in order for each one them found to be guilty.
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This is America son. Land of the free and the home of the even more free if you're a mega corporation with a massive lobbying arm. Any penalty is going to be perfunctory and nothing more than pablum for the masses.
 
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The future is bright for big brother. The future is now.

This stinks, it’s amazing. I wonder if we need to assume that such stuff is happening in Europe too...? Is there any ‘rumours’ on that, perhaps?
 
Oh, dear: the Secret's out.

I went to the same workplace (same Clients (same Supply Hoose)); same Grocer; same Petrol station; same . . .

. . . just like how I choose to add some random purchase linked to my Grocer '+card' every week (or so), it's fun to throw-in a random Lat/Lon once in a while; maybe prod a "ermigod! I just nodded-off at a Proposal Meeting" jolt in the Day-2-Day of some electrostatistician ;)

I might just drive x-country this next week, and purch a cupola GS's at some wayward Denny's...

...just for fun ;)

Regards, splifingate
 
Rather an irony that one branch of the US government, the FCC, is supposedly all in a fluff over data sharing by the four big carriers, while another branch, the NSA, after having been exposed in spying on American people with aplomb by Edward Snowden six years ago, is merrily continuing its own snooping policies unabated. Snowden, meanwhile, is exiled and wanted for exposing the corruption. The FCC is less a regulative agency for the carriers than it is an enabler; the NSA no longer protects its citizenry from foreign enemy spying, but treats its own citizens as an enemy which must be spied upon.
 
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Basically location smart shared real-time data with Securus and they sold the data to the police and FBI, which bypassed the carriers entirely.
 
This is a side show for Ajit Pai to get some good press. It’s long past time we recognize as a society that data about us has a monetary value and we should be the ones who decide what information we’re willing to offer and what we get in return.

Today the opposite is true and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. The Bill of Rights offered the greatest protection of our rights that the world had ever known at the time it was written but things have changed. You won’t find the word corporation in them because they weren’t a threat to our right to privacy at that time. We need to have a new Digital Bill of Rights that not only protects us from snooping by the government but also prevents snooping by both non profit and for profit corporations.
 
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drumcat said:
If "Liberty" is promised, the location of someone not wanted/warranted is not sharable. Selling your location in real-time violates the Fourth Amendment, IMO. IANAL.
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The Constitution only regulates the activity of the government, so a company with whom you choose to do business selling your information is not covered by the 4th amendment.
 
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Companies, especially huge ones, will do whatever they please with your data until they are forced to stop, either by criminal prosecution or severely punitive financial penalties. Asking a few questions won't change a thing. No pain is being inflicted.
 
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The carriers are selling their data, not our personal data. The data they are selling is about where and when the carrier sends/recieved data.

Taxi analogy. I can track where my driver goes and when and who he picks up and drop off. That is my data and I can sell it.
 
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Reactions: splifingate
At this point, there shouldn't be any questions, only penalties. That website giving out live location data of any phone to anyone who paid (or anyone who knew their vulnerability for some time) was the smoking gun. There's no way to explain that.
 
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