FCC fines wireless carriers for sharing user locations without consent

The Federal Communications Commission has leveraged nearly $200 million in fines against wireless carriers AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon for illegally sharing customers’ location data without their consent. Officials first began investigating the carriers back in 2019 after they were found selling customers’ location data to third-party data aggregators. Fines were proposed in 2020, but carriers were given time to argue against the claims before the fines were imposed. T-Mobile faces the largest fine at $80 million. Sprint, which merged with T-Mobile since the investigation began, received a $12 million charge. The FCC hit Verizon with a $47 million penalty, and AT&T was issued a $57 million fee.