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Technology,
Data Privacy

May 21, 2025

How cell carriers cashed in on your location - and may get off the hook

Carriers push federal courts to strip the FCC authority to penalize them for improperly selling customer location data. Major mobile carriers profited by selling customers' real-time location data to shady third parties, triggering FCC fines now unraveling under a Supreme Court ruling that restores the right to a jury trial and threatens to dismantle agency-run penalty systems.

Anita Taff-Rice

Founder
iCommLaw

Technology and telecommunications

1547 Palos Verdes Mall # 298
Walnut Creek , CA 94597-2228

Phone: (415) 699-7885

Email: anita@icommlaw.com

iCommLaw(r) is a Bay Area firm specializing in technology, telecommunications and cybersecurity matters.

See more...

How cell carriers cashed in on your location - and may get off the hook
Shutterstock

Our mobile phones know a lot about us. They know who we call, and from where we are every minute of the day. Such data is protected from disclosure by federal law, so one would think the mobile carriers would keep it secure. But not so.

In 2018, press reports revealed that all of the major carriers were making a handsome profit selling geolocation data collected from customers' cell phones to third-party aggregators ...

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