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The US Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on two data brokers for selling users' location data to controversial buyers, including US government agencies.
Today, The FTC banned Georgia-based Mobilewalla and Virginia-based Gravy Analytics from selling this sensitive location data, which could reveal the places a user visited.
In 2020, Mobilewalla was found to be monitoring the location data of people participating in Black Lives Matter protests in the US. It collected the information from other data brokers focused on delivering smartphone ads through apps or websites. This enabled the company to collect over 500 million unique “advertising identifiers paired with location information” between 2018 and 2020, including timestamps, the FTC said in a proposed settlement with Mobilewalla.
“The raw location data Mobilewalla collected was not anonymized and the company doesn’t have policies to remove sensitive locations from the data set, meaning that such data could be used to identify individual consumers’ mobile devices and the sensitive locations they visited,” the FTC said. “The company sold access to this raw data to third parties, including advertisers, data brokers, and analytic firms.”
The other problem is that Mobilewalla allegedly failed to secure user consent for data collection and sales. In response, the FTC is blocking the company from collecting the location data through online advertising auctions —the primary way it was amassing the information.
"It also is prohibited from using, transferring, selling and disclosing sensitive location data from health clinics, religious organizations, correctional facilities, labor union offices, LGBTQ+-related locations, political gatherings, and military installations,” the FTC said, among other stipulations.
As for Gravy Analytics, the company recently grabbed headlines for its subsidiary, Venntel, which also collected location data from smartphones but sold it to government contractors. This includes powering a law enforcement tool called "Locate X," which can be used to identify phones that recently visited an abortion clinic.
In addition, the FTC found that Gravy Analytics sold the location data without users’ consent from a billion mobile devices. “Gravy Analytics also unfairly sold sensitive characteristics, like health or medical decisions, political activities, and religious viewpoints, derived from consumers’ location data,” the commission said.
Like Mobilewalla, the FTC’s proposed settlement also calls for similar restrictions against Gravy Analytics. The Commission is also requiring the company to “delete all historic location data and any data products developed using this data.” However, the US regulator stopped short of issuing a major fine against both companies.
Mobilewalla and Gravy Analytics, which has merged with Unacast, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. In the meantime, the FTC is soliciting public comment on both settlements over the next 30 days before finalizing them.