The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is proposing more than $200 million in fines against the country’s top mobile carriers after a lengthy investigation concluded T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon improperly sold access to their customers’ precise location information.
The agency is alleging the companies broke the law by failing to protect information about the geolocation of their hundreds of millions of customers.
“The FCC has long had clear rules on the books requiring all phone companies to protect their customers’ personal information,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai (R) said. “And since 2007, these companies have been on notice that they must take reasonable precautions to safeguard this data and that the FCC will take strong enforcement action if they don’t.”
“Today, we do just that,” Pai said.
The proposed fines — which Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint are now allowed to contest — are some of the largest the FCC has proposed in decades. But since reports began emerging about the fines on Thursday night, consumer advocates and privacy hawks in Congress have accused the regulatory agency of holding back and letting the telecom companies off the hook with fines that amount to a “rounding error” compared to their significant bottom lines.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who was one of the first to shed light on the companies’ unlawful information sharing, released a statement accusing Pai of going easy on the companies.
“It seems clear Chairman Pai has failed to protect American consumers at every stage of the game – this issue only came to light after my office and dedicated journalists discovered how wireless companies shared Americans’ locations willy nilly,” Wyden said. “He only investigated after public pressure mounted.”
“And now his response is a set of comically inadequate fines that won’t stop phone companies from abusing Americans’ privacy the next time they can make a quick buck,” Wyden said.
Verizon, for instance, boasted a total revenue of $31.4 billion in 2019 and is facing a fine of $48 million.
The FCC is proposing a fine of $91 million for T-Mobile, $57 million for AT&T, $48 million for Verizon and $12 million for Sprint.
T-Mobile, which is facing the largest fine by far, said in a statement Friday that it intends to dispute the FCC’s conclusions.
“We take the privacy and security of our customers’ data very seriously,” T-Mobile said. “While we strongly support the FCC’s commitment to consumer protection, we fully intend to dispute the conclusions of this NAL and the associated fine.”
The FCC kicked off its investigation into the companies’ location-sharing practices after multiple investigative reporters shined a light on how easy it is for outside parties and even law enforcement to track a person’s location thanks to information from their mobile carrier.
Last year, Motherboard was able to track a cellphone’s location by giving a bounty hunter the phone number and $300 to purchase the information off of a data broker.
And in 2018, The New York Times published a blockbuster report detailing how a law enforcement official was able to track people without a warrant using mobile carrier customers’ real-time location.
All of the major providers have vowed to end their partnerships with data brokers. T-Mobile in its statement pointed out that it was the first provider to commit to ending its location aggregator program in light of the scrutiny.