The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on Monday that it was suing a data company for allegedly selling consumers' data that could be used "to trace the movements of individuals to and from sensitive locations."
"The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against data broker Kochava Inc. for selling geolocation data from hundreds of millions of mobile devices that can be used to trace the movements of individuals to and from sensitive locations. Kochava's data can reveal people's visits to reproductive health clinics, places of worship, homeless and domestic violence shelters, and addiction recovery facilities," the FTC said in a press release announcing the lawsuit. "The FTC alleges that by selling data tracking people, Kochava is enabling others to identify individuals and exposing them to threats of stigma, stalking, discrimination, job loss, and even physical violence."
According to the press release, the FTC is seeking to stop the Idaho-based data company from selling "sensitive geolocation data" and to have it delete the data it already has collected.
The announcement of the lawsuit came shortly after The Washington Post reported that Kochava filed a lawsuit against the FTC after the government agency threatened to sue for "unfair or deceptive practices." According to The Washington Post, in the lawsuit, Kochava claimed that the FTC "wrongfully alleges" that the data company violated the agency's consumer protection policies and laws.
"This is a manipulative attempt by the FTC to give the appearance that it is protecting consumer privacy despite being based on completely false pretenses," Kochava general manager Brian Cox said in a statement to The Washington Post last week.
In the complaint filed on Monday, the FTC alleged that Kochava "collects a wealth of information about consumers and their mobile devices by, among other means, purchasing data from other data brokers to sell to its own customers."
The data sold by Kochava "may be used to track consumers to sensitive locations, including places of religious worship, places that may be used to infer an LGBTQ+ identification, domestic abuse shelters, medical facilities, and welfare and homeless shelters. For example, by plotting the latitude and longitude coordinates included in the Kochava data stream using publicly available map programs, it is possible to identify which consumers' mobile devices visited reproductive health clinics," the complaint added.
The complaint also said that the data allegedly being sold by Kochava is timestamped and "not anonymized." According to the complaint, the alleged sale of this data creates a possible "intrusion" into consumers' personal lives and is "likely to cause substantial injury to consumers."
In a statement, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Samuel Levine said, "Where consumers seek out health care, receive counseling, or celebrate their faith is private information that shouldn't be sold to the highest bidder....The FTC is taking Kochava to court to protect people's privacy and halt the sale of their sensitive geolocation information."
Shortly after the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 ruling in the Roe v. Wade decision, Vice News reported that an unnamed location data company was reportedly selling location data related to consumers' visits to reproductive health clinics, such as Planned Parenthood.
Newsweek was directed to the press release after reaching out to the FTC. Newsweek also reached out to Kochava for comment on the lawsuit.
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Matthew Impelli is a Newsweek staff writer based in New York. His focus is reporting social issues and crime. In ... Read more
