In a recent ruling, the U.S. District Court of Appeals affirmed the Federal Communication Commission's decision to fine T-Mobile for improperly selling location data to aggregators. The court found that T-Mobile, along with Sprint, failed to protect their customers' location information, leading to a breach of privacy and a violation of the law.
The FCC initially imposed fines on T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon in 2020 for selling location data to third-party service providers. T-Mobile was fined $80 million, which included Sprint's fine as well. Despite T-Mobile's appeal of the fine last year, the court upheld the FCC's decision and deemed it lawful.
According to U.S. District Court Judge Florence Pan, T-Mobile and Sprint did not take timely action to prevent the misuse of location data, even after becoming aware of the issue. The carriers argued that the FCC misinterpreted the Communications Act and violated their Seventh Amendment rights, but the court dismissed their claims as lacking merit.
Privacy advocates, such as Eric Null from the Center for Democracy and Technology, hailed the court's decision as a victory for consumer privacy. T-Mobile responded to the ruling by stating that they had discontinued their location-based services program several years ago.
