Companies Collectively Sold 300 Million Customers’ Details to Third Parties for Money
These companies shared the private details of 300 million customers from 30th April 2015 to 15th February 2019. The data includes their mobile number, customers’ geolocation, and other account data that customers have in their mobiles. Motherboard Company has shed light on this data selling practice in 2019. They have provided a detailed report about how a bounty hunter found a person’s location. He had no other details apart from the user’s mobile number. The bounty hunter got the details from a third party person. It has found in an investigation that this third party person received information from the telecommunication services. Motherboard paid $300 to acquire the data and they got enough data from the telecommunication services. The complaints against T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are very similar mentioning how they have been selling the customer’s data for money. After the report, 15 US senators called on FCC and FTC to conduct an investigation on these four companies and their data selling practice. The lawsuits are filed against “consumer protection law firm”. Lawyers are in search of unspecified damages that have happened due to the selling of information. The trail will shed light on these unspecified damages.
