Today, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission banned data broker Outlogic, formerly X-Mode Social, from selling Americans' raw location data that could be used for tracking purposes.
Under the order released today, the first time data brokers were barred from sharing and selling users' sensitive location data, Outlogic must now delete all unlawfully collected sensitive location data, including any models or algorithms derived from this data.
This action is in response to data brokers' practices of exposing individuals' location data and revealing much more sensitive information, such as medical visits and religious affiliations.
The FTC's complaint sheds light on Outlogic's history of selling consumer location data to hundreds of clients across diverse industries, including real estate, finance, and government sectors.
Despite these activities, the FTC says the company lacked protocols to remove sensitive locations from the raw data it sold.
To make matters worse, even when individuals opted out of using their location data for marketing purposes, Outlogic sometimes failed to respect their preferences.
Outlogic specializes in selling and licensing precise location data sourced from its proprietary mobile apps, third-party apps using its software development kit, and purchasing data from other brokers.
It did not adequately inform users of their apps or third-party apps that used Outlogic's SDK about the use of their location data.
Outlogic also had shortcomings in providing complete disclosures regarding who would be able to buy the users' location data and failed to obtain informed consent from consumers to access their sensitive location data, a critical oversight noted in FTC's complaint.
Outlogic's inadequate technical safeguards led to disregarding requests from certain Android users to opt out of tracking and personalized advertisements.
Today's order follows an August 2022 Biden executive order safeguarding access to reproductive health care services and protecting patients' privacy issued after an anti-abortion group also used mobile location data to target visitors of some Planned Parenthood clinics with ads.
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This Cyber News was published on www.bleepingcomputer.com. Publication date: Tue, 09 Jan 2024 20:35:36 +0000