Public interest organizations file FCC complaint against AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile over sale of customers’ phone location data to third parties

Public interest organizations have filed an informal complaint with the FCC about the sale of customers’ phone location data to third parties by AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

According to the complaint filed by New America’s Open Technology Institute, the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, Free Press, and Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic at Colorado Law, the carriers’ practice of selling customer data without consent or court order violates several provisions of the Communications Act and the FCC rules. The complaint urges the FCC to investigate and take enforcement actions.

In January, Motherboard reported that wireless companies have been selling their customers’ location data to aggregator companies. These aggregators then resell the information to third parties that in turn sell them to bail bondsmen, landlords, credit check companies, and other entities. All four wireless companies pledged to stop the sale of their customers’ location information in 2018.

“The non-consensual disclosure and sale of location information turns our mobile phones into devices that track our every move and make our whereabouts available for a fee,” said Blake Reid, director of the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic and Counsel to the Center on Privacy. “The FCC must ensure that this practice comes to an end for the sake of the privacy and safety of all Americans.”

The complaint follows recent criticism of the practice by public officials. Last month, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel demanded answers from wireless phone companies on their sale of customers’ phone location data to third party data aggregator companies. In January, 15 US senators urged the FCC and the FTC to “investigate the sale of Americans’ location data by wireless carriers, location aggregators, and other third parties.”

Links:

Informal complaint against AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile, for unauthorized disclosure and sale of customer location information (Free Press, Jun. 14, 2019)

FCC Commissioner Demands Answers from AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon on Phone Location Data (Motherboard, May. 1, 2019)

Letter from Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to wireless CEOs (FCC, May. 1, 2019)

I gave a bounty hunter $300. Then he located our phone (Motherboard, Jan. 8, 2019)

Verizon and AT&T will stop selling your phone’s location to data brokers (Ars Technica, Jun. 19, 2018)