US Government Imposes Major Fines Against Wireless Carriers over Unauthorized Data Sharing with Third Parties, Including Prisons

The US government has issued significant fines against major wireless carriers AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon as a result of an examination into the improper sharing of customer data without consent. The FCC alleged in 2020 that for years these companies had unlawfully shared users’ geolocation histories with third parties including prisons through their commercial programs.
The fines are related to carriers passing on user location information to “location aggregators”, which then provided the data onto other customers without obtaining valid customer consent, according to an FCC statement released Monday (July 19). The regulator said that each carrier attempted to transfer its obligations for gaining consumer approval onto downstream recipients of location details.
In response to being fined by the regulatory body, all carriers involved have stated their intention to appeal against the decision. AT&T described it as “lacking both legal and factual merit” in a statement, while Verizon said that when one bad actor gained unauthorised access to information relating to only a small number of customers they acted quickly by cutting off fraudsters and shutting down their programmes. T-Mobile stated its location data sharing programme was discontinued more than five years ago after it took steps to ensure critical services like roadside assistance, fraud protection and emergency response would not be affected.
In 2018 an investigation into the matter by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon found that cellphone location information had been obtained by Securus, a provider in prisoner telephone communication which also supplied digital recording, incident reporting along with management technology to correctional facilities across North America and internationally. The senator at the time called on the FCC to investigate the issue. “No one who signed up for a cell plan thought they were giving permission for their phone company to sell detailed records of their movements to anyone with a credit card,” Wyden said in an announcement Monday (July 19). “I applaud the FCC for following through on my investigation and holding these companies accountable for putting customers’ lives and privacy at risk.”