FCC fines major mobile carriers ~$200M for sharing user data

Major phone carriers AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint have been slapped with a collective fine of nearly $200 million for violating users’ privacy and sharing their locations without consent, said the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) yesterday.

The move is the latest in the FCC’s crackdown on mobile service providers. It began investigating the companies when data sold by them, including subscriber’s location, landed on illegal third-party sites.

Announcing the order, the FCC pointed out that the telecom giants have made it easy for “foreign adversaries and cybercriminals” to access Americans’ private information.

T-Mobile was fined more than $80 million, AT&T over $57 million, Verizon almost $47 million and Sprint, which has merged with T-Mobile since the investigation began, above $12 million.

An AT&T spokesperson said the FCC order “lacks both legal and factual merit” and plans to appeal it after a legal review.