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Carrier sales of phone-location data is illegal, FCC plans punishment

arstechnica.com

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Re: Carrier sales of phone-location data is illegal, FCC plans punishment

#101

Post by toomuchtodo »

russdill wrote: post #80
adrr wrote: post #70

Biggest industry affected is the banks. They’ll ping your phone location if you make out of area purchases as a part of fraud detection. If your bank doesn’t require travel notices, they are probably pulling mobile location. Some don’t, I know chase uses mobile app to determine location.

The saddest thing about this is that my bank no longer requires notification for international travel, but still does for travel within the US. I've had my card shut off for fraud a few times while traveling in the US. Once when I had almost no gas and was outside of cell service, thanks for that. This is presumably due to all transactions outside of the US requiring chip, but those in the US only requiring swipe.

Switch banks? I have never once had American Express decline a charge domestic or international. Highly recommend!

Re: Carrier sales of phone-location data is illegal, FCC plans punishment

#102

Post by thedirt0115 »

redmattred wrote: post #31
PrivateRepo wrote: post #28

What companies are immediately going to be affected by this?

https://www.skyhook.com/

Wow, I had never heard of them, and I did not like this quote from the landing page (if they got their data from mobile carriers like this): "Gain deeper insights from location data to answer questions like who visits certain places, where else do they visit, where do they come from and much more." I don't like the feeling of being spied on.

Re: Carrier sales of phone-location data is illegal, FCC plans punishment

#103

Post by dredmorbius »

deadmutex wrote: post #26
parvenu74 wrote: post #20

But Facebook, Google, Microsoft, et al are still free to sell phone location data acquired through apps (or Android itself in the case of Google), right? I wonder if there is any hope of laws to limit the ability of companies to sell this data...

IIRC, Google doesn't sell your personal location data: https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-data/ Disclaimer: I work at Google.

That may be true.

But Google created the entire damned infrastructure and environment which makes precisely that effect possible, no matter how thinly you slice the hairs on what it is you call the practice.

Re: Carrier sales of phone-location data is illegal, FCC plans punishment

#104

Post by thedirt0115 »

lonelappde wrote: post #44
JohnFen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Particularly given that Pai's FCC has developed a bit of a habit of levying fines and then not bothering to actually collect them.

More info about this?

0.003% of robocall fines collected so far: https://gizmodo.com/fcc-reportedly-collected-only-0-003-of-r...

Re: Carrier sales of phone-location data is illegal, FCC plans punishment

#106

Post by charred_toast »

Are there even laws anymore? It seems like the law only applies to non-corporate entities and citizens. If you're in politics, law enforcement, or the Fortune 500, expect zero consequences for breaking the law. Exceptions exist but aren't the rule.

Re: Carrier sales of phone-location data is illegal, FCC plans punishment

#107

Post by dredmorbius »

admax88q wrote: post #105

Why is it legal for them to collect that data in the first place? Can't sell, abuse, or accidentally leak that which you don't have.

AT&T maintain a comprehensive database of call level history dating to the 1980s.

Certainly to resolve customer billing disputes, I'm sure.

https://www.eff.org/cases/hemisphere

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_detail_record

http://epic.org/privacy/nsa/Section-215-Order-to-Verizon.pdf

Re: Carrier sales of phone-location data is illegal, FCC plans punishment

#108

Post by gonational »

charred_toast wrote: post #106

Are there even laws anymore? It seems like the law only applies to non-corporate entities and citizens. If you're in politics, law enforcement, or the Fortune 500, expect zero consequences for breaking the law. Exceptions exist but aren't the rule.

This, so much.

Bounce over to this comment on another front page post for another great example:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22208260

Re: Carrier sales of phone-location data is illegal, FCC plans punishment

#109

Post by paulproteus »

I've long believed that when companies do illegal things that would normally be punished by prison, the company should go to prison.

The company office would have to operate according to the same rules as a prison. Employees on arrival are security-checked the same way prisoners would be when they arrive for the first time. Rules about talking between cells, and device use, are the same as a prison. Once you get to your prison office, and you have your prison clothes on, you can work on paper.

I think this should be an existing prison. If a company wants to instead hire prison guards and do renovations to make their existing office work like a prison, I could be flexible to that.

Presumably all the employees would rather quit than work in prison. Sounds okay to me.

Presumably all investors would pressure the CEO to avoid getting the company put in prison because it would be a real productivity problem. Sounds okay to me.

Re: Carrier sales of phone-location data is illegal, FCC plans punishment

#110

Post by gersh »

adrr wrote: post #70

Biggest industry affected is the banks. They’ll ping your phone location if you make out of area purchases as a part of fraud detection. If your bank doesn’t require travel notices, they are probably pulling mobile location. Some don’t, I know chase uses mobile app to determine location.

I think they can just tell the zip code where you use the card.
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