FCC To Finally Probe U.S. Wireless Abuse Of Customer Location Data

We’ve noted for years how your mobile phone location data is routinely abused by a long list of bad actors, including your wireless carrier. We’ve also noted how the GOP Senate, hand in hand with the telecom sector, managed to kill FCC broadband privacy guidelines in 2017 that would have gone a long way in protecting consumer data in the post-Roe landscape.

With that as backdrop, the FCC announced last week that it would take a closer look at U.S. wireless carrier abuse of location data:

The FCC has sent letters to most major U.S. wireless carriers asking them to detail the entire scope of their wireless location data collection procedures, including how much data is collected, how it’s stored, and which organizations and companies it’s collected by, transferred, and sold to. The inquiry comes on the heels of an FTC report showing the rampant and unaccountable data collection by the telecom sector.

Activists for years have warned about the obvious threat of over-collection and sharing of sensitive consumer wireless location data, be it gleaned from your mobile phone or apps. Now, post-Roe, it’s all but guaranteed this and other data (search histories, app usage) is going to be used by states (and potentially vigilantes, since this data is often easy to purchase) looking to target abortion seekers and those who help them.

This is, of course, a pretty deep rabbit hole. Most companies claim that collecting this data isn’t a big deal because it’s “anonymized,” despite the fact that studies keep showing that word means nothing. Telecom giants often claim they don’t sell this kind of data, but that’s generally found to be a lie (they just call the practice of bundling and transferring and selling it to others something else).

How much the FCC can do here is of question. A good chunk of the agency’s privacy rulemaking authority was stripped away when the GOP and telecom sector gutted FCC broadband privacy rules in 2017. But they can still bring some transparency to the proceedings.

That should be good news to Trump appointed FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who has been breathlessly concerned about the abuse of user location data (albeit only when TikTok and China do it). As noted then, you can’t fight against oversight of the entire adtech and telecom snoopvertising apparatus as Carr does, then get singularly upset only when China abuses the broken system you helped build.

To actually fix this mess you need transparency and accountability for all companies and industries, and some well-written (I know that’s a big ask) privacy guidelines for the Internet era that prioritize market health and consumer safety over making money (also a very big ask).