FCC finalizes $196M in fines against telecoms for sharing location data
By 
Adrianne Appel2024-04-29T20:30:00
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined telecommunications giants T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon a total of approximately $196 million for allegedly selling customers’ location data to third parties without consent.
T-Mobile and AT&T immediately responded that they would fight the fines.
The cases for the penalties, pending since 2020, began with an investigation into reports the carriers were disclosing customer location data to a Missouri sheriff through a third-party location-finding service operated by Securus, which specialized in providing communication services to prisons. Securus was tracking specific people using the data provided by the carriers, the FCC said.
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