The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ultimately sued AT&T, T-Mobile US, and Verizon for nearly $200 million for illegally selling subscriber real-time location information to third-party distributors without their consent. He plans to pay a fine.
The agency's confiscation order announced yesterday (29 April) that it had completed the apparent liability notices (NALs) it issued to three mobile phone operators in February 2020. Sprint has also been named for its actions prior to its merger with T-Mobile in April 2020.
On April 17, after reviewing carrier NAL responses, FCC commissioners along party lines fined AT&T $57 million, Verizon $46 million, and T-Mobile $80 million. and passed a fine of $12 million against Sprint.
An investigation by the FCC Enforcement Division into four carriers found that each carrier sells access to customer location information to “aggregators,” who in turn resell access to such information to third-party location service providers. It turned out that it was.
“In doing so, carriers have sought to shift the burden of obtaining customer consent to downstream recipients of location information, but in many cases, carriers have attempted to shift the burden of obtaining customer consent to downstream recipients of location information, often failing to obtain valid customer consent. “he meant it,” the FCC said.
The report notes that operators continued to “sell access to location information without taking reasonable steps to protect against unauthorized access” and that initial He pointed out that this made the failure even worse.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, voted in favor of the fine.
Rosenworcel said in a statement that operators “sell real-time location information to data aggregators, allowing this sensitive data to fall into the hands of bail bond companies, bounty hunters, and other shady parties.” I made it possible.”
commissioner brendan carRepublicans voted against retroactive “flagrant forfeitures.”
He noted that location-based service (LBS) providers have been providing valuable services to consumers, such as emergency medical response and roadside assistance, for more than a decade. Kerr said 2018 news reports revealed that local law enforcement officials abused their access to LBS providers' services and were charged with misconduct.
“All participating carriers have since terminated the LBS program. Therefore, our decision today does not address any ongoing practices.”
Operator plans to appeal
Representatives from T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon spoke. mobile world live (M.W.L.) They disagree with the FCC's findings.
T-Mobile said the FCC's decision was “erroneous and the fine is excessive.” We're going to give it a try. ”
The report said the company's “industry-wide third-party aggregator location services program will continue to operate for five years after taking steps to ensure critical services such as roadside assistance, fraud prevention, and emergency response are uninterrupted.” It was canceled a long time ago.”
Verizon said M.W.L. The company said the FCC's order was “wrong on both fact and law” and that it plans to appeal the decision.
“When one malicious actor gains unauthorized access to information about a small number of customers, we act quickly and proactively to shut down the fraudster, shut down the program, and ensure this never happens again. '', the representative explained.
An AT&T representative said: M.W.L. “The FCC's order lacks legal and factual merit,” it said, adding that it plans to appeal the order after conducting a legal review.
“Unfairly held us responsible for another company’s breach of the contractual requirement to obtain consent, ignored the immediate steps we took to address that company’s failures, and supported life-saving location services.” This would unfairly punish our company.”