The US Federal Trade Commission is taking action against two US data brokers accused of illegally trafficking in sensitive people location data. The data was used, the agency says, to track Americans in and around churches, military bases and doctors’ offices, among other protected sites. It was sold not only for advertising purposes but also for political campaigns and government uses, including immigration law enforcement.
Mobilewalla, a George-based data broker said to have digitally tracked residents of domestic abuse shelters, is accused by the agency of intentionally tracking protesters in the wake of the 2020 killing of George Floyd. In a court filing , the FTC says Mobilewalla attempted to unmask protesters’ racial identities by tracking their mobile devices to, for example, Hindu temples and black churches.
The FTC also accused Gravy Analytics and its subsidiary Venntel of collecting and exploiting consumers’ location data without consent, alleging that the company used that data to unfairly infer health decisions and religious beliefs.
According to the FTC, Gravy Analytics collected more than 17 billion location signals from approximately 1 billion mobile devices daily. He has reportedly sold access to that data to federal authorities such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Gravy Analytics could not immediately be reached for comment.
A Mobilewalla spokesperson says the company’s privacy policies are constantly evolving, adding: “While we disagree with many of the FTC’s allegations and implications that Mobilewalla tracks and targets people based on sensitive categories, we are satisfied that the resolution will allow us to continue providing valuable information to businesses in a way that respects and protects consumer privacy.”
“This data can be used to identify and target consumers based on their religion,” the FTC says. The location data collected by the two companies makes it possible, the agency says, “to identify where individual consumers lived, worked and worshiped, thereby suggesting the religion and routine of the mobile device user and identifying the user’s friends and family.” .
Under the two agreements, which must be finalized in court before they take effect, Gravy Analytics and Mobilewalla are prohibited from collecting sensitive consumer location data and must delete historical data they collected on millions of Americans. Mobilewalla would be prohibited from acquiring location data and other sensitive information from online auctions known as real-time bidding (RTB) exchanges, marketplaces where advertisers compete to instantly deliver ads to specific consumers. This case marks the first time the FTC has taken action to police data collection directly from an ad exchange.