FCC fines AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon nearly $200 million for illegally sharing location data

3 weeks ago

The Federal Communications Commission is fining nan largest US mobile carriers a mixed astir $200 million for allegedly illegally sharing customers’ location information without their consent.

The FCC says it recovered nan carriers “sold entree to its customers’ location accusation to ‘aggregators,’ who past resold entree to specified accusation to third-party location-based work providers.” The agency says nan carriers efficaciously “attempted to offload” their work to get customers’ consent to stock their location information pinch “downstream recipients.” Even aft being made alert of nan issue, nan FCC claims, nan carriers still grounded to limit entree to nan information.

The fines alteration crossed carriers. T-Mobile faces nan largest astatine $80 million. Sprint, which merged pinch T-Mobile since nan investigation began, faces a $12 cardinal fine. AT&T faces nan second-largest good astatine astir $57 million, followed by Verizon astatine astir $47 million. T-Mobile’s and Verizon’s fines are really little than what was initially projected by nan agency based connected their responses to nan FCC’s original notice.

The FCC opened nan investigation aft it was publically reported connected by various outlets. Tech journalist Joseph Cox wrote astir nan rumor successful 2019 for Motherboard. While plans for nan FCC good were reported backmost successful 2020, nan last telephone was stalled by a prolonged deadlock astatine nan agency arsenic it awaited a 5th commissioner’s confirmation, according to The Wall Street Journal.

AT&T spokesperson Alex Byers said nan FCC’s action “lacks some ineligible and actual merit. It unfairly holds america responsible for different company’s usurpation of our contractual requirements to get consent, ignores nan contiguous steps we took to reside that company’s failures, and perversely punishes america for supporting life-saving location services for illustration emergency aesculapian alerts and roadside assistance that nan FCC itself antecedently encouraged. We expect to entreaty nan bid aft conducting a ineligible review.”

Verizon spokesperson Richard Young said that nan institution took swift action erstwhile “one bad character gained unauthorized entree to accusation relating to a very mini number of customers.” He said nan cardinal rumor involves “an aged programme that Verizon unopen down much than half a decade ago.” Young added that nan FCC bid “gets it incorrect connected some nan facts and nan law, and we scheme to entreaty this decision.”

T-Mobile declined to supply an on-the-record consequence successful statement pinch our policy.