Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey
Verizon and AT&T have promised to stop selling their mobile customers' location information to third-party data brokers following a security problem that leaked the real-time location of US cell phone users. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) recently urged all four major carriers to stop the practice, and today he published responses he received from Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile USA, and Sprint. Wyden's statement praised Verizon for "taking quick action to protect its customers' privacy and security," but he criticized the other carriers for not making the same promise.
"After my investigation and follow-up reports revealed that middlemen are selling Americans' location to the highest bidder without their consent or making it available on insecure Web portals, Verizon did the responsible thing and promptly announced it was cutting these companies off," Wyden said. "In contrast, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint seem content to continuing to sell their customers' private information to these shady middle men, Americans' privacy be damned."
AT&T changed its stance shortly after Wyden's statement. "Our top priority is to protect our customers' information, and, to that end, we will be ending our work with aggregators for these services as soon as practical in a way that preserves important, potential lifesaving services like emergency roadside assistance," AT&T said in a statement to Ars.
Sen. Wyden recognized AT&T's change on Twitter and called on T-Mobile and Sprint to follow suit.
[...] Sprint announced that it is changing their data sharing practices about two hours after the Ars story published. "Sprint is beginning the process of terminating its current contracts with data aggregators to whom we provide location data," Sprint told Ars. "This will take some time in order to unwind services to consumers, such as roadside assistance and fraud prevention services." Sprint said that it previously "suspended all data sharing" with LocationSmart, a data broker involved in the controversy. Sprint said that it stopped providing data to LocationSmart on May 25.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @07:00PM (3 children)
I'm sure they have committed to this with effective enough weasel words that allows them to sell the location data to non "data brokers", who will in turn sell the location data to data brokers.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @07:18PM (2 children)
They'll probably just become data brokers themselves rather than sell the raw data stream. That they weren't doing that already was kind of surprising.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday June 21 2018, @08:46PM
Exactly.
So they cut out the middle man, and take all the profit themselves.
Until they promise to stop providing location to ANYBODY other than 911, I won't believe them.
If a company sells my information / location, I want a cut of the proceeds with a detailed record of each sale.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Thursday June 21 2018, @10:17PM
Or, more likely, they'll start selling advertising services. That's how Facebook does it - they have tons of raw data that advertisers would kill for. But (Cambridge Analytica notwithstanding), rather than sell the data, they instead choose to USE the data by selling highly targeted advertisements.
Comedian Eugene Mirman explains how this works. [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @08:52PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mykl on Friday June 22 2018, @12:31AM
The amount of data that these businesses have about people is truly terrifying:
- Home address / Billing address (if they can't get this from the info you provide them, they can deduce it from location data - see below)
- Full record of all calls made and received, including timing
- Location (24/7)
- Web browsing history (including those visited in 'Private mode')
- Text Messages
- Credit Card details
We've already seen that they are prepared to sell some of this data without informing their customers. I fully believe that they would sell the rest too if they thought they could get away with it. Just look at how long they shafted consumers by helping facilitate third-party billing scams!
Here in Australia, the TIO* and the ACCC** do a pretty good job of protecting consumers, but if I were relying on the FCC to save me from these monsters I'd be terrified.
* Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman. If you can't resolve a problem with your telco, you can contact the TIO and they will intervene on your behalf, with the power to force some outcomes
** Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Broad-based consumer rights watchdog who tackle general dodginess across business
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @03:02PM
The Australian Bullshit of Statistics debt has admitted to taking data from Hellstra to track people's movements by their phone mapping their profile to identify age, sex etc in a terrible violation of the public's privacy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @03:59PM
it only took one principled congressman/actual american statesman to make some statements and these rats start scurrying. too bad none of the dumb whores in congress bothered before. now if someone could make sure these vermin don't do it in other ways like they always do. also, the fact that these companies are basically fronts of the surveillance state is a problem too. this "national security" data is being shared with all "law enforcement". we can't just pay and use a goddamn phone. we have to be treated like slaves. that's why i use zrtp(voice), omemo(text) and pgp(email).
you think you're going to use tech to subjugate us? we're going to make you parasites obsolete in short order.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @05:18PM
SCOUTS has just weighed in [reuters.com] on this issue. Law enforcement needs a warrant to get cell tower location data.