Regulators Decide to Fine Telecoms for Selling Location Data

The US regulators have decided to impose fines against the countries’ 4 major wireless carriers for selling the location data of the customers without their consent.

The Federal Communications Commission has suggested to fine, T-Mobile more than $91 million, Verizon $48 million, AT&T around $57 million and Sprint $12 million.

These firms were accused of having disclosed the mobile network user location data to a 3rd party without the consent of the customers, as said by the Federal Communications Commission.

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The FCC has started an inquiry after a report that a sheriff in Missouri used a location finding service that was operated by a prison communications services firm called Securus for tracking the locations of people which included the judge and the law enforcement officers.

The carriers offered access to the customer location data to the aggregators who then resold that information to services like Securus, as per the regulator.

Ajit Pai the FCC chairman said in a press release that the American consumers take their wireless phones along wherever they travel. He also said that the information about a wireless customer’s location is highly personal and sensitive.

The US telecom firms have been issued a notice for more than a decade that they are needed to protect the location data collected about the users, Pai further said.

The fine sizes were based on how long the carriers continue to sell the customer location information without proper protections and how many parties had access to it, as said by the FCC.

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