Gravy Analytics Illegally Tracked Locations Of A Billion Devices

More details: Found here

The proposed court order would bar the selling, disclosing, or using sensitive location data in any product or service, and require the establishment of a sensitive data location program, the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday .

The FTC said Gravy Analytics and its subsidiary Venntel processed around a billion devices and their locations daily, didn't anonymize the data to safeguard people's information and didn't get consent from people.

It marks the FTC's fourth action this year against challenging the sale of location information, said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection

The same day, the FTC also said broker MobileWalla was likely to agree to a ban on it selling sensitive location data after it allegedly collected and sold the information of millions of Americans without properly verifying consent.

Also on Tuesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said it was  seeking tighter rules on data brokers  who sell personal and financial information.

Dieter Holger is a data reporter for ConsumerAffairs. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, PCWorld and dozens of other outlets. He holds a Master of Science in computational and data journalism from Cardiff University and a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from UC Santa Cruz. Write to him at dholger@consumeraffairs.com.