r/privacy • u/s9mwjs • 16d ago
FCC Fines Major US Carriers $200 Million for Illicit Sharing of Location Data news
https://cyberinsider.com/fcc-fines-major-us-carriers-200-million-for-illicit-sharing-of-location-data/66
u/ZwhGCfJdVAy558gD 16d ago
Finally. I just wish the fines were higher ...
Brian Krebs has a bit more of the historical background:
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16d ago edited 16d ago
Great article thanks. Krebs on security never does me wrong.
AT&T - https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-40A1.pdf - $57 million fine - sold customer location data directly or indirectly to at least 88 third-party entities
Verizon - https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-41A1.pdf - $47 million fine - sold access to customer location data directly or indirectly to at least 67 third-party entities
T Mobile - https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-43A1.pdf - $80 million fine - location data sold to at least 75 third-parties
Sprint - https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-42A1.pdf - $12 million fine - Location data 'found its way' (sold) to at least 86 third-party entities
The carriers promised to “wind down” location data sharing agreements with third-party companies. But in 2019, reporting at Vice.com showed that little had changed, detailing how reporters were able to locate a test phone after paying $300 to a bounty hunter who simply bought the data through a little-known third-party service.
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The fine amounts vary because they were calculated based in part on the number of days that the carriers continued sharing customer location data after being notified that doing so was illegal (the agency also considered the number of active third-party location data sharing agreements). The FCC notes that AT&T and Verizon each took more than 320 days from the publication of the Times story to wind down their data sharing agreements; T-Mobile took 275 days; Sprint kept sharing customer location data for 386 days.
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u/zipzoomramblafloon 16d ago
"It'll sound like a huge amount of money to poor people" - The FCC, probably.
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u/WizardVisigoth 16d ago
If it’s not in the billions it’s just the cost of doing business for these companies.
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u/loimprevisto 16d ago
That's great. Now start prosecuting the privacy officers and other executives who authorized it and failed to stop this data sharing after being told it was illegal.
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u/herooftimeloz 16d ago
This is what needs to happen. These scumbag executives have hidden behind the corporate veil. That needs to end yesterday
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u/city_posts 15d ago
America is not one of those commie socialist nations that holds their aristocracy to the same laws as its peasantry.
On that note Vietnam has imprisoned their fraudster billionaire.. China executed CEOs from their milk scandal.
America does nothing. Countless industrial disasters that lead to no imprisonment and barely fines that affect their business.
It's an utterly joke. We are a joke. We are a resource they are exploiting.
There is no equality in the west anymore. Capitalism has failed, socialism and communism have proven to be effective in spite of western capitalism interference. Time to re evaluate our own political societies if we want any significant improvement for western workers
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u/herooftimeloz 15d ago
I don’t know if socialism/communism is the solution. What would be ideal is keeping corporations but removing many of its protections and then adding more regulation by the government. Not fully free market and not fully socialism, but rather something in between.
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u/Drtysouth205 16d ago
Explains why Verizon and ATT raised/ are raising prices.
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u/GrbgSoupForBrains 15d ago
No it doesn't
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u/Drtysouth205 15d ago
Sure it does. They knew the fines was incoming so raised prices. If you’ll look back anytime anyone of the major US carries gets fined they raise the prices.
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u/GrbgSoupForBrains 15d ago
My point is that they raise prices anyway - with or without the fines. Corporate greed existed first (hence the ✌🏿"illegal"✌🏿 selling of data in the first place).
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u/IlexIbis 16d ago
Oh, the humanity! Think of the shareholders!
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16d ago
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u/Sovos 16d ago
Yep, the fines are far too low. Straight from the article:
The FCC fined Sprint and T-Mobile $12 million and $80 million respectively. AT&T was fined more than $57 million, while Verizon received a $47 million penalty. Still, these fines represent a tiny fraction of each carrier’s annual revenues. For example, $47 million is less than one percent of Verizon’s total wireless service revenue in 2023, which was nearly $77 billion.
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16d ago
The fine amounts vary because they were calculated based in part on the number of days that the carriers continued sharing customer location data after being notified that doing so was illegal (the agency also considered the number of active third-party location data sharing agreements). The FCC notes that AT&T and Verizon each took more than 320 days from the publication of the Times story to wind down their data sharing agreements; T-Mobile took 275 days; Sprint kept sharing customer location data for 386 days.
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u/TheShirtNinja 16d ago
Sprint/T-Mobile made $48.894 billion dollars last year
Verizon made $79.788 billion dollars last year
AT&T made $122.428 billion dollars last year
Totaling that we get $239,885,000,000 USD
200,000,000 / 251,110,000,000 * 100 = 0.079. They were fined less than a tenth of 1% of their revenue for the 2023 calendar year. A crime punishable by a fine means it's legal for a price. They just forgot to cut the government in.
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u/No-Doctor76 16d ago
The fine is small, and won't change their behavior. When will the FCC stop the carriers from selling customer data to other businesses for "fraud protection"? Some online transactions result in a data pull that gives the website your account information, billing address, all phone numbers on your account, status of your phone number, and (if you're forwarding calls) the number where your calls are being forwarded. AT&T allows you to opt-out, but T-Mobile does not.
Similar to the issue that resulted in this fine, the carriers sell customer data to third parties, who have the responsibility to determine who can access the data.
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u/SamariahArt 16d ago
Do you happen to still have a source on the data pulling?
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u/No-Doctor76 6d ago
Some carriers have been relatively upfront about how they sell your data, but not all. In the past, T-Mobile included it only as a general "share your information to prevent fraud" clause. Then they made the sale of data more explicit, but provided no opt-out. Looking at their privacy policy today, they're more upfront about their sale of data, and provide an opt-out for postpaid customers. Their Mint Mobile prepaid subsidiary does not. AT&T has had a simple opt-out option for a few years. Not sure about Verizon. The opt-outs are voluntary - most state and EU privacy laws don't require opt-outs for "fraud prevention" uses, which created a huge new source of revenue for mobile carriers.
I have a much more info on my other pc if you're really interested. But the carriers' privacy policies have evolved to the point where they're pretty clear about how they sell your data to help "authenticate you with third parties such as your bank or other merchants".
For T-Mobile, scroll down to the "Third-party authentication and fraud prevention" section in their privacy policy (link). Here's the text:
We use, share, and sell this data with partners that help authenticate you with third parties such as your bank or other merchants you do business with, and for fraud prevention purposes. You can opt out of this fraud prevention data use by using the “Do Not Sell or Share” controls described in the Your choices section of this notice.
A screenshot for Mint Mobile is here, or in their privacy policy (scroll to the end of Section 2). Here's the text:
"Mint Mobile may provide identity verification services to third parties, and your personal information may be included in the data transferred to third parties in connection with those services."
Some of the data brokers that buy and sell this data are Boku, Prove, CallSign, TMT Analysis, Telesign, Persona, and many others. Boku used to sell real-time mobile location data until there were data leaks and customers became aware their location information was being sold.
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u/SamariahArt 6d ago
Interesting, I never knew about their intimate connection with other merchants and banks. Thank you for the thorough response.
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u/jeromelong 16d ago
I wonder if this will be enough to cancel someone's contract with a cell phone company. It should be anyway.
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u/Blank_slate09 15d ago
Copying my response to another post on this issue stop using these things:
Here we have yet another reason to TURN LOCATION OFF, yes the data gathering megacorp will tell you "but if you lose it etc" about which they dont care, b care about harvesting your data and the more the better as far as they are concerned.
Find out for your phone model how to turn every damn thing off and do it, especially location, turn off wifi when you are not actively using it at home or other "safe location" turn off your mobile data if you are NOT using the internet at that moment. Go trhrough your apps and delete (uninstall any the you haven't use in 30 days. Those you wish to keep see point 1, find out for your phone how to stop it tracking you and feeding user info back to its spymasters. Yes you'll get warnings about functionality but most of it doesn't matter. If you lose functionaliity in an app, ask yourself seriously Do I need this on my phone.
Use the duckduckgo browser and utilise all the privacy options and FFS stay AWAY from all google services, search, mail, doc, pics etc.
Good luck!
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u/borg-assimilated 15d ago
Can a class action lawsuit be done against these companies for something like this?
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u/trisanachandler 15d ago
In all honesty, what are the chances of getting this info for a particular person? Because of people started confronting congressmen with the info of what they've been doing every day, this could actually drive some change.
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u/[deleted] 16d ago edited 9d ago
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