Four wireless carriers have each been fined millions of dollars by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The FCC on Monday accused AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon of sharing access to customer location information “without consent and without taking reasonable steps to protect such information from unauthorized disclosure,” while it imposed fines on operators.
The regulator argued that this constituted a violation of the law.
In this regard, the regulator fined T-Mobile more than $80 million, and its Sprint brand also received one of more than $12 million, according to the agency’s press release.
Meanwhile, fines against AT&T and Verizon total approximately $57 million and $47 million, respectively.
The FCC claimed that “aggregators” that received customer location data from carriers turned around and charged third-party location service providers a price for access.
Operators maintained their practice of selling access to this data even “after realizing that their guarantees were ineffective,” the regulator also affirmed.
“This industry-wide third-party aggregator location-based services program was discontinued more than five years ago after we took steps to ensure that critical services such as roadside assistance, security fraud and emergency response would not be disrupted,” T-Mobile told FOX. Business.
“We take our responsibility to ensure the security of our customers’ data very seriously and have always supported the FCC’s commitment to protecting consumers, but this decision is wrong and the fine is excessive. We intend to contest it.
AT&T also challenged the FCC’s decision and told FOX Business it plans to challenge the order “after conducting a legal review.”
The Texas-based carrier argued that it “unfairly holds us responsible for another company’s violation of our contractual requirements for obtaining consent, ignores the immediate steps we took to address that company’s failures and perversely punishes us for supporting vital location-based services like emergency medical care. alerts and roadside assistance that the FCC itself previously encouraged.
“Verizon is deeply committed to protecting the privacy of our customers,” company spokesperson Rich Young told FOX Business.
“In this case, when a malicious actor gained unauthorized access to information relating to a very small number of customers, we quickly and proactively eliminated the fraudster, closed the program and ensured that this did not happen again. reproduce more. Unfortunately, the FCC’s order gets both the facts and the law wrong, and we plan to appeal this decision.
The old program, which Verizon ended more than five years ago, “required affirmative, voluntary consent from the customer and was intended to support services such as roadside assistance and medical alerts,” according to Young .
The fines came four years after the FCC first sought to financially penalize the four wireless carriers in 2020.
In total, the fines announced Monday amount to just under $200 million.
The regulator had highlighted the reported case of a former law enforcement officer obtaining location information through a “location service” as a catalyst for policing carriers.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement that the FCC “has once again made clear that wireless carriers have a duty to keep our geolocation information private” by enforcing the order. and fines.
AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon each have 12-digit market caps, hovering at $121.1 billion, $192.38 billion, and $166.22 billion, respectively.
New York Post
