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Verizon Promises to Stop Selling Data to Third Party Brokers

For years wireless cell carriers have sold off consumer location data to everyone from urban planners to marketers without much in the way of oversight. Every so often that lack of oversight becomes painfully clear as we just saw with the Securus and Locationsmart scandal, which exposed the location data of roughly 200 million US and Canadian wireless consumers. Both companies buy real-time access to this data from cell carriers, but a lack of oversight resulted in access to this data being routinely abused.

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Hoping to get out ahead of this scandal before the press and public realizes that abuse of location data makes the Cambridge and Facebook scandal look cute, Verizon today sent a letter to Senator Ron Wyden (pdf) stating the company would stop selling private consumer location data to third party brokers.

"We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of our customers' location information, and will keep you informed as we execute our plan to terminate these location-based aggregation arrangements with the aggregators," said Verizon chief privacy officer Karen Zacharia.

Wyden had begun probing the largely unaccountable rabbit hole that is location data sharing. Verizon says it has ending its contracts with location aggregators like LocationSmart and Zumigo, and admitted that those deals in turn passed that anonymized data on to more than 75 other partner companies. And as the Location Smart and Securus scandal proved, that data isn't always all that anonymous, and can routinely be abused.

Verizon's decision to pre-emptively back away from this behavior in the wake of huge profits likely indicate its lawyers realized the company was potentially in some very deep, very hot water. Verizon also likely wants to avoid any real, meaningful privacy rules, something the company has been fighting against for the better part of the last decade.

"When these issues were brought to our attention, we took immediate steps to stop it. Customer privacy and security remain a top priority for our customers and our company," Verizon said of the decision in a company statement.

"Verizon did the responsible thing and promptly announced it was cutting these companies off," Wyden said in a statement of his own. "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."

But shortly after Verizon's announcement AT&T announced it would similarly stop third-party location data sales in a bid to prevent a deeper inquiry or tougher privacy guidelines. So far, neither Sprint nor T-Mobile have been willing to comment or join the fun, despite T-Mobile's reputation as a fierce consumer ally (ignoring their opposition to net neutrality, of course).

Update: Both Sprint and T-Mobile have followed suit, but it's worth noting that most of these promises are decidedly short on hard details:

»twitter.com/jbrodkin/sta ··· 37119495

Most recommended from 13 comments



Shamayim
Premium Member
join:2002-09-23

22 recommendations

Shamayim

Premium Member

Verizon Promises . . .

I stopped reading right there.
sd70mac
Premium Member
join:2015-10-18
Woodstock, IL

8 recommendations

sd70mac

Premium Member

Regulation is still needed

Regulation is still needed to prevent abuses of data collection. Hopefully Senator Wyden will continue to investigate this issue.

WHT
join:2010-03-26
Rosston, TX

7 recommendations

WHT

Member

Brought To Our Attention

"When these issues were brought to our attention, we took immediate steps to stop it ... "

Someone has to post this..

»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· Pi00k_ME
swarto112
Premium Member
join:2004-02-17
El Dorado Hills, CA

4 recommendations

swarto112

Premium Member

fat chance

i was on att for over a decade and then we switched to VZW last Oct...my phone hasnt stopping blowing up 30x a day since. Hadnt changed my number in forever because we moved enuf that it was prudent to not bother...now no one remembers anyones number so it doesnt matter. But still, VZW sold my data and it sucks, cuz i didnt buy a phone nor sign a contract so they didnt need to recoup costs...argh