T-Mobile to dispute $91M FCC fine for allegedly selling customer location data

Article by Audrey Conklin.

The Federal Communications Commission on Friday proposed $200 million in fines against the big four U.S. mobile carriers for allegedly selling customers’ location data, which T-Mobile said it “fully intends to dispute.”

The FCC sent four respective notices of apparent liability (NALs) to Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint informing them of potential penalties for failing to protect customer location data by selling it to third-party companies. The commission has not made a final decision on the fines and said it would listen to the carriers’ responses. […]

The FCC’s investigation began after various outlets reported that Missouri Sheriff Cory Hutcheson used phone-tracking technology from disgraced communication firm Securus to access mobile phone users’ location data between 2014 and 2017 without the warrants necessary to do so. The FCC is alleging that all four mobile carriers sold this information to aggregators like Securus. The issue of sharing location data with third parties without customer consent has become one of concern since mobile phone users began to realize that location data, which is always visible to networks when a customer uses data instead of Wi-Fi, can reveal sensitive information about individual schedules and even medical visits. […]

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