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A letter from 15 U.S. senators to the heads of he Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission is calling for an investigation on “the sale of Americans’ location data by wireless carriers, location aggregators and other third parties.” The lawmakers cite “multiple news reports” that “highlight the fact that the four major wireless carriers …. sold their customers’ location data to approximately 70 companies.
An investigation by Motherboard found that “T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are selling access to their customers’ location data, and that data is ending up in the hands of bounty hunters and others not authorized to possess it, letting them track most phones in the country.” The person who wrote the story said that he was able to locate a phone by paying a bounty hunter $300.
According to Motherboard:
Although many users may be unaware of the practice, telecom companies in the United States sell access to their customers’ location data to other companies, called location aggregators, who then sell it to specific clients and industries
CNET wrote that ” The four major US carriers spent a combined $36.9 million on lobbying over privacy issues in 2018, according to government documents.”
