Federal Regulators Limit Location Brokers from Selling Your Whereabouts: 2024 in Review

The opening and closing months of 2024 saw federal enforcement against a number of location data brokers that track and sell users’ whereabouts through apps installed on their smartphones. In January, the Federal Trade Commission brought successful enforcement actions against X-Mode Social and InMarket, banning the companies from selling precise location data—a first prohibition of this kind for the FTC. And in December, the FTC widened its net to two additional companies—Gravy Analytics (Venntel) and Mobilewalla—barring them from selling or disclosing location data on users visiting sensitive areas such as reproductive health clinics or places of worship. In previous years, the FTC has sued location brokers such as Kochava, but the invasive practices of these companies have only gotten worse. Seeing the federal government ramp up enforcement is a welcome development for 2024.

As regulators have clearly stated,This article has been indexed from Deeplinks