The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has fined AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile a total of $200 million for illegally sharing customers’ location data without their consent. The fines were issued following an investigation that found the companies had sold access to their customers’ location information to “aggregators,” who then resold the information to third-party location-based service providers.
AT&T was fined $57 million, Verizon was fined $47 million, and T-Mobile was fined $80 million. The FCC stated that the carriers had attempted to offload their obligation to obtain customer consent onto others, resulting in no valid customer consent being obtained.
The FCC’s investigation found that the carriers continued to sell access to location information without taking reasonable measures to protect it, even after they were made aware that safeguards were ineffective. The carriers have stated that they intend to appeal the decision.
Read more at: edition.cnn.com