Media Contact: 
Umair Javed 202-418-2400
Umair.Javed@fcc.gov

For Immediate Release

COMMISSIONER JESSICA ROSENWORCEL RELEASES RESPONSES TO CALL FOR AN UPDATE ON THE SALE OF REAL-TIME LOCATION DATA 


WASHINGTON, May 16, 2019:   Earlier this month, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel sent letters to major phone companies asking for an update on their progress toward halting the sale of customers’ real-time location information.  A series of press reports over the past year revealed that geolocation data collected by phone companies was being made available to hundreds of bounty hunters across the country.  However, the FCC so far has not provided the public with any details, despite the ongoing risk to the safety and security of American consumers.  Nor has it taken any public action to ensure that this activity has stopped.

Today, Commissioner Rosenworcel is making public the responses she received.

“The FCC has been totally silent about press reports that for a few hundred dollars shady middlemen can sell your location within a few hundred meters based on your wireless phone data.  That’s unacceptable.  I don’t recall consenting to this surveillance when I signed up for wireless service—and I bet neither do you.  This is an issue that affects the privacy and security of every American with a wireless phone.  It is chilling to think what a black market for this data could mean in the hands of criminals, stalkers, and those who wish to do us harm.  I will continue to press this agency to make public what it knows about what happened.  But I do not believe consumers should be kept in the dark.  That is why I am making these letters available today.”


—FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel

###

Office of Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel: (202) 418-2400
Twitter: @JRosenworcel
www.fcc.gov/leadership/jessica-rosenworcel

This is an unofficial announcement of Commission action.  Release of the full text of a Commission order constitutes official action.  See MCI v. FCC, 515 F.2d 385 (D.C. Cir. 1974).