A federal appeals court upheld a $92 million fine against T-Mobile for selling customer location information without consent. The Federal Communications Commission previously fined T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon for illegally sharing access to sensitive customer data. The ruling highlighted that every cell phone tracks location and creates a detailed history of where users go. The court noted that T-Mobile and Sprint sold customer location information to third-party aggregators without verifying consent, allowing unauthorized access to this sensitive data even after being made aware of the abuse.
"Every cell phone is a tracking device. To receive service, a cell phone must periodically connect with the nearest tower in a wireless carrier's network. Each time it does, it sends the carrier a record of the phone's location and, by extension, the location of the customer who owns it. Over time, this information becomes an exhaustive history of a customer's whereabouts and provides an intimate window into [that] person's life."
"Several bad actors abused Sprint and T-Mobile's programs to illicitly access CLI without the customers' knowledge, let alone consent. And even after Sprint and T-Mobile became aware of those abuses, they continued to sell CLI for some time without adopting new safeguards."
Collection
[
|
...
]