The Federal Communications Commission on Monday fined the largest U.S. wireless carriers nearly $200 million for illegally sharing access to customers’ location information, CNN reported.
The FCC is finalizing fines first proposed in February 2020, including $80 million for T-Mobile (TMUS.O), opens new tab; $12 million for Sprint, which T-Mobile has since acquired; $57 million for AT&T (T.N), opens new tab, and nearly $47 million for Verizon Communications (VZ.N), opens new tab.
The carriers sold “real-time location information to data aggregators, allowing this highly sensitive data to wind up in the hands of bail-bond companies, bounty hunters, and other shady actors,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement.
The wireless carriers said they plan to challenge the fines. Carriers have allowed the use of location-data for programs like roadside assistance, logistics, medical emergency alert services, human trafficking alerts and fraud prevention.
“Smartphones are always with us, and as a result these devices know where we are at any given moment,” Rosenworcel said. Citing the sensitivity of geolocation data, she added, “In the wrong hands, it can provide those who wish to do us harm the ability to locate us with pinpoint accuracy.”
T-Mobile said the “industry-wide third-party aggregator location-based services program was discontinued more than five years ago after we took steps to ensure that critical services like roadside assistance, fraud protection and emergency response would not be disrupted.”
