FCC Imposes $200 Million Fine on USA’s 4 Biggest Mobile Carriers for Sharing Location Data without Consent

4 US Carriers, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile, have been fined $200 million for sharing location data without consent.
The issue dates back to 2018, and even after a formal investigation by the FCC in 2020, these companies apparently stuck to their old ways.
All four accused have decided to challenge the decision and take legal measures if needed.

Popular US carriers AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and T-Mobile are getting a combined fine of nearly $200 million by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for sharing their customers’ location data without their consent.

T-Mobile got the biggest share of the fine, $80 million. This is followed by AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint who are paying $57 million, $47 million, and $12 million respectively. It’s important to note that Sprint and T-Mobile merged in 2020.

Where Did Illegal Location Sharing Begin?

It all started in 2018. Several publications were already talking about this issue—the New York Times was one of the first to bring this to light.

The most significant development came when Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden launched a probe that found that a certain user’s cell phone location had reached the hands of Securus—a prison phone service provider.

If such data ended up in the wrong hands, it could be used to spy on all American citizens. So, Wyden called on the FCC to investigate the matter.

After that, the FCC carried out an investigation and found that the above-mentioned four carriers were actually sharing users’ location data with resellers (also known as ‘location resellers’) who then sold the data to other third parties, including prisons.

Even after the companies were called out for their actions, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile took 275 days to end their location-based service program, whereas Sprint took 386 days. Note that I’ve counted from the date of the first report published by the NY Times.

According to the FCC, these companies gave away their responsibility of obtaining user consent to downstream recipients, which meant that no consent was ultimately obtained.

Rumors about the fine started flying back in 2020, but it was stalled because of a deadlock at the agency, where it waited for a fifth commissioner’s confirmation. It’s finally happening now.

What Do the Carriers Have to Say about the FCC Fine?

All four carriers have said that they will challenge this decision. AT&T made a statement saying “The FCC order lacks both legal and factual merit.”

AT&T further added that another company was contractually bound to obtain consent from AT&T customers. They failed. And AT&T did everything in its power to clean up the mess that another company created.

However, the FCC ignored the company’s efforts and the fact that its location-sharing services can actually be used for sending life-saving medical alerts and decided to punish it for something it apparently didn’t do.

Read more: AT&T suffers major data breach compromising the data of 73 million users

Verizon’s sentiments are similar to AT&T’s. It said that protecting user privacy is one of its top priorities and that what happened was an unfortunate incident. It took immediate action to cut off the scammer who tried to access user data.

Furthermore, Verizon shut down its data sharing program to ensure nothing like this ever happens again. It’s unhappy that the FCC took no notice of its efforts and imposed a massive fine.

T-Mobile will also challenge the decision because it feels that the fine is just too much, especially considering that its location-sharing services were discontinued more than five years ago. Right now, it only supports location sharing in case there’s an emergency.

On the other hand, though, US Senator Ron Wyden, who started the entire investigation, applauded the FCC’s decision to hold the four companies accountable for putting customers’ lives and privacy at risk.

‘No one who signed up for a cell plan thought they were giving permission for their phone company to sell a detailed record of their movements to anyone with a credit card.’ – Senator Ron Wyden

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