In April, AT&T, T-Mobile, And Verizon Were All Fined By The FCC For Selling Customer Location Data
Back in April, the FCC did an investigation and slammed AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, AKA the Big Three carriers, with massive fines. As a result, AT&T was told to pay $57m, Verizon was told to pay $47m, and T-Mobile was told to pay $80m (though that pushes up to $92m since Sprint, swallowed up by T-Mobile, had a fine to pay too). But why exactly?
Well, each of these carriers was found to be sharing the location data of its customers with third parties, called aggregators, purely for advertising purposes. These aggregators basically build a marketing profile for you, using information picked up from all sorts of different sources. All those annoying ads that seem to know exactly which city or town you’re in, what store you just ate at, or the last website you were on, can be blamed on behavior like this.
The thing is, sharing location data isn’t a crime on its own. The problem is, that none of these carriers actually asked for customer consent, and that’s where the big problem is. This is the culmination of a four-year investigation that started in 2020, and each of these companies was found to be in violation of Section 222 of the Communications Act.
AT&T Won’t Go Down Without A Fight; Is Appealing The Fine Already
AT&T has been told to pay up $57m, which is no small amount, even for a company that did over $120b in revenue last year. Unsurprisingly, AT&T is not in approval of the fine that’s been sent their way, so they’ve already begun the appeal process. They claim the decision was “contrary to the law” and what they did (you know, selling the location data of customers) was well within their rights. According to them, customer location data is not “customer proprietary network information”, and that should free them of the restraints of Section 222 of the Communications Act.
AT&T is the first of the Big Three to officially begin the appeal process, but of course, they won’t be the only one. Appeals are almost standard procedure for company’s hit with big fines like this, and Verizon and T-Mobile have already made it clear that they intend to be following suit soon.
Either way, there’s little for customers to do but sit and watch the process play out. If you’re very concerned about your privacy, there’s little guarantee that the smaller carriers won’t treat your data the same way, especially with the rate they’re getting snapped up at.
