Verizon Pledges to Stop Selling Information on Phone Owners' Location to Data Brokers
Sunday, June 24th, 2018 -- 7:42 AM
Verizon is pledging to stop selling information on phone owners' locations to data brokers, stepping back from a business practice that has drawn criticism for endangering privacy, The Associated Press has learned.The data has allowed outside companies to pinpoint the location of wireless devices without their owners' knowledge or consent. Verizon said that about 75 companies have been obtaining its customer data from two little-known California-based brokers that Verizon supplies directly ??" LocationSmart and Zumigo. Though Verizon is the first major U.S. wireless carrier to end sales of such data to brokers that then provide it to others, Verizon did not say it was getting out of the business of selling location data.
The nation's largest mobile carrier in subscribers count made its disclosure in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who has been probing the phone location-tracking market. Last month, Wyden revealed abuses in the lucrative but loosely regulated field involving Securus Technologies and its affiliate 3C Interactive. Verizon says their contract was approved only for the location tracking of outside mobile phones called by prison inmates
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