Major mobile carriers fined nearly $200 million for illegally sharing customer location data
The Federal Communications Commission is penalizing the biggest US mobile carriers with a total fine of nearly $200 million for supposedly sharing customers’ location data unlawfully without their permission.
The FCC discovered that the carriers were selling access to their customers’ location information to "aggregators," who in turn sold it to third-party location-based service providers. The agency found that the carriers tried to shift their responsibility of obtaining customers’ consent to share their location data to other parties. Despite being informed about the problem, the carriers allegedly didn't take adequate steps to restrict access to the information.
The fines differ for each carrier. T-Mobile has the highest fine of $80 million. Sprint, which merged with T-Mobile during the investigation, is fined $12 million. AT&T faces a fine of about $57 million, and Verizon's fine is approximately $47 million. Interestingly, both T-Mobile's and Verizon's fines are less than what was initially suggested by the agency due to their responses to the FCC's initial notice.
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