FCC Argues AT&T’s $57 Million Location Privacy Fine Should Stand

In new filings this week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said that AT&T’s T -0.63%↓ $57 million customer location sharing fine should stay in place.  The FCC contends that AT&T illegally shared access to their customer’s location and fined it and the nations other largest wireless carriers a total nearly $200 million in April.

The FCC contends that the carriers sold access to location data without their customer’s consent “and continued to do so without reasonable safeguards.”

Besides AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile TMUS -0.27%↓, which merged since the investigation started, were hit the hardest with $12 million and $80 million fines, respectively.  Verizon VZ -1.15%↓ was hit with a $47 million fine.

In the recent filing with the 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals, and first reported by MediaPost,  the FCC said:  “For years, AT&T sold the location of its wireless customers to its business partners with no way of verifying that the information was being used for a legitimate purpose or that the customers had consented to sharing it.  This system-wide vulnerability endangered the privacy, and safety, of millions of the company’s customers.”

All of the carriers, which say they do no longer sell their customer’s location data, appealed their fines in separate federal courts.  While AT&T appealed in the 5^th Circuit, Verizon filed in the 2^nd Circuit and T-Mobile in the District of Columbia Circuit.

During its investigation, which started during the Trump administration, the FCC said that the four carriers sold customer location information to “aggregators,” who resold the data to third-party location-based service providers.  The federal agency cited public reports that indicated that a Missouri sheriff used location information, provided by Securus, to track “numerous individuals.”