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FTC Says Data Brokers Unlawfully Tracked Protesters and US Military Personnel
- The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken action against Mobilewalla and Gravy Analytics and subsidiary Venntel, accusing the companies of trafficking in people's sensitive location data.
- The data was used, the agency says, to track Americans in and around churches, military bases, and doctors' offices, among other protected sites. It was sold not only for advertising purposes but also for political campaigns and government uses, including immigration enforcement.
- Mobilewalla is said to have tracked George Floyd protesters in 2020 to unmask their racial identities, while Gravy Analytics harvested and exploited consumers' location data without consent, according to the FTC.
- Gravy Analytics collected over 17 billion location signals from approximately a billion mobile devices daily and reportedly sold access to that data to federal law enforcement agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
- The companies are accused of enabling government agencies to surveil Americans without a warrant and enabled foreign countries to spy on service members.
- The settlements, which must be finalized in court, bar Mobilewalla and Gravy Analytics from collecting sensitive location data from consumers and require the companies to delete the historical data they gathered on millions of Americans.
- Mobilewalla is also prohibited from acquiring location data and other sensitive information from online auctions known as real-time bidding exchanges while Gravy Analytics would be banned from selling, disclosing, or using data drawn from sensitive locations such as mental health clinics, substance abuse centers, and child care provider sites.
- The proposed Gravy Analytics settlement would designate military installations as sensitive locations under FTC rules, where the collection of data would be prohibited.
- While the FTC's orders do not directly tackle the issue of government agencies purchasing Americans' location data, Senator Ron Wyden said the cases undermine the government's case for allowing the purchases and that agencies are hiding behind a flimsy claim that Americans consented to the sale of their data.
- Andrew Ferguson, whose name was floated last month as a potential replacement for FTC chair Lina Khan, partially concurred with the agency's decisions to bring cases against the two data brokers and agreed the companies had taken insufficient steps to ensure consumer data was properly anonymized.
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