On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission sued data broker Kochava for allegedly selling location data obtained from hundreds of millions of phones.
The Data include sensitive information such as tracking people visiting abortion clinics, domestic abuse shelters, places of worship etc.
"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."
- Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection
In the complaint, the FTC claim that Kochava collected the data by tracking the Mobile Advertising ID, or MAID, from mobile devices.
Tracking an estimated 125 million monthly active users, and 35 million daily active users, observing on average more than 90 daily transactions per device.
The data is then sold through Amazon Web Services or other channels without first anonymizing the data.
