Julie Clover
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today announced [PDF] that it has fined AT&T, Verizon and Sprint/T-Mobile a combined $196 million for illegally selling access to customer location information without consent.
Sprint and T-Mobile (now merged into T-Mobile) were fined by $12 million and $80 million respectively. Verizon was fined nearly $47 million and AT&T more than $57 million.
The FCC first began investigating the four largest U.S. carriers in 2019 after they were found to be selling real-time location information from customer devices. to third party data aggregators, which resulted in this location data being sold a second time to private investigators, bounty hunters, law enforcement, credit card companies, etc.
Following an investigation, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) confirmed that wireless carriers violated federal law by disclosing consumer location data. The fines were proposed back in 2020, but telecom operators were given the opportunity to present evidence and legal arguments against the decision before the fines were officially imposed.
Fines vary depending on the length of time, during which each operator sold access to. to information about the location of clients without any security measures, as well as the number of organizations that were granted access. The Federal Communications Commission has found that telecom carriers have a responsibility to protect their customers' personal information, which they have not done.
“Our telecom providers have access to some of the most sensitive data about us, these carriers communications have failed to protect the information entrusted to them. Here we are talking about some of the most sensitive data they have: real-time location information about customers, showing where they are going and who they are,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. As we resolve these cases, which were first proposed by the previous administration, the Commission remains committed to holding all carriers accountable and ensuring that they meet their obligations to their customers as stewards of this most sensitive of data.”
The four carriers had different methods, but each carrier relied on contract-based guarantees that data aggregators purchasing real-time location information would obtain consent from customers before accessing their location, which they did not happened. Even after it became known that the data was being used in this way, the FCC says carriers “continued to sell access to location information without taking reasonable steps to protect it from unauthorized access.”
Tags: AT&T , FCC, T-Mobile, Verizon[105 comments]
