I honestly don’t understand the process by which someone at these carriers proposed this as a product and somehow it was all approved and the carriers decided this was a good thing to do. How much revenue did selling this data provide them? It surely can’t be much.
(I get it could’ve been worth more if they provided it to ad networks somehow but that doesn’t seem to be the case according to the articles.)
It got approved because the FCC, as a regulatory body, has no teeth. The largest-ever fine issued by the FCC was $120 million. Their attorneys probably put the total regulatory risk of non-compliance at around $1 million.
According to the article they were charging up to $1,100 per phone for the location data.
So if they sold data on 1,000 customers they're in the black on the program even after they deal with the regulatory "headache."
Maybe they should have GDPR-like fines (I am not saying that GDPR it self is good!): "In some cases, violators of the GDPR may be fined up to €20 million or up to 4% of the annual worldwide turnover of the preceding financial year in case of an enterprise, whichever is greater."
AT&T's revenue is 170.756 billion so the fine would be up to 6830 million dollars, or almost 7 billion dollars.
Maybe this kind of threat would stop them from selling this private data.
First and foremost I think it is a cultural problem. This behaviour is seen as "just what people do" and therefore we must punish it otherwise it will never go away. I don't disagree that punishment is something that is warranted, but I also think that maybe it is time to take a deep hard look at why this behaviour is so prevalent.
We are all up in arms about modern tech companies “selling data” by offering targeted ad placement. I propose that this outrage properly belongs with older and more traditional institutions, from your telco to your supermarket, who are literally exchanging spreadsheets of personal data for money.
10 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 37.6 ms ] thread(I get it could’ve been worth more if they provided it to ad networks somehow but that doesn’t seem to be the case according to the articles.)
According to the article they were charging up to $1,100 per phone for the location data.
So if they sold data on 1,000 customers they're in the black on the program even after they deal with the regulatory "headache."
AT&T's revenue is 170.756 billion so the fine would be up to 6830 million dollars, or almost 7 billion dollars.
Maybe this kind of threat would stop them from selling this private data.
If a company deliberately break the law, why not send those who decided to to that, the CEO and the chairman of the board to prison?