The FCC Fines Wireless Companies for Selling Users’ Location Data
In May possibly 2018, The New York Occasions noted that a company called Securus had marketed legislation-enforcement companies access to the places of people’s cellphones. Police have been meant to deliver a warrant or other documentation proving they had authority to see the data, but the Occasions explained Securus frequently did not look at.
Subsequent tales by ZDNet and Vice Motherboard disclosed an market of middlemen that acquired locale facts from AT&T, Sprint, T-Cell, and Verizon and resold it to companies like Securus. Some of the facts came from the bail bonds market, elevating issues that stalkers could obtain their victims’ locale facts.
The big 4 carriers all promised to prevent offering locale data to data aggregators. But months later, a lot of companies nonetheless had access to carrier data.
Now, approximately two years later, the Federal Communications Fee is using action versus the 4 carriers for their role in