FTC Alleges Data Brokers Sold Sensitive Location Data

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced actions taken against data brokers, alleging that the companies sold sensitive location data.

In one action, the agency announced a proposed order that would prohibit Gravy Analytics and its subsidiary Venntel from selling, disclosing or using sensitive location data in any product or service, the FTC said in a Tuesday (Dec. 3) press release.

In another action, the FTC said a proposed settlement order would prohibit Mobilewalla from selling sensitive location data and from collecting consumer data from online advertising auctions for purposes other than participating in those auctions, according to another Tuesday press release.

Neither Gravy Analytics nor Mobilewalla immediately replied to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

The proposed order for Gravy Analytics and Venntel would settle the FTC’s allegations that those organizations unlawfully tracked and sold sensitive location data from users, according to the release.

In its complaint, the agency alleges that Gravy Analytics and Venntel obtained consumer location data from other data suppliers, claimed to curate more than 17 billion signals from a billion mobile devices daily, and sold location data that was not anonymized and could be used to identify consumers, according to the release.

It also alleges that Gravy Analytics used geofencing to identify and sell lists of consumers based on their visits to health-related locations, places of worship and other sites that associate consumers with sensitive characteristics, per the release.

“Surreptitious surveillance by data brokers undermines our civil liberties and puts service members, union workers, religious minorities and others at risk,” Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in the release.

The proposed order for Mobilewalla would settle the FTC’s allegations that the company collected unique consumer advertising identifiers paired with consumers’ precise location data, did not remove sensitive locations from the dataset, and sold access to this raw data to third parties, according to the release.

The agency also alleges that Mobilewalla used this sensitive location data to enable its clients to target consumers for advertising and other purposes, per the release.

“Mobilewalla collected massive amounts of sensitive consumer data — including visits to health clinics and places of worship — and sold this data in a way that exposed consumers to harm,” Levine said in the release.

In an earlier, separate move, the FTC said in July that it is looking to learn more about companies’ use of personal data to categorize individuals and set individualized prices from the same goods or services — a practice it calls “surveillance pricing.”