Earlier this year, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that users generally lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in unprotected Google search records, underscoring how aggressively some courts are still applying third-party doctrine principles to digital data. Commonwealth v. Kurtz, 348 A.3d 133 (Pa. 2025). Our previous blog post on Kurtz is available here.
location data
FTC Settles with Companies Over Sale of Sensitive Data
By Linn Foster Freedman on
Posted in Enforcement + Litigation
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been on a mission to communicate its seriousness about companies collecting, using, and selling consumers’ sensitive location data and that it is closely watching these practices.
On December 3, 2024, the FTC announced that it entered into a proposed order with Gravy Analytics and its subsidiary Venntel “for unlawfully…
FCC Fines Wireless Carriers $200M for Sharing Location Data with Third Parties
By Linn Foster Freedman on
Posted in Enforcement + Litigation
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced that it has levied almost $200 million in fines against “the nation’s largest wireless carriers for illegally sharing access to customers’ location information without consent and without taking reasonable measures to protect that information against unauthorized disclosure.”
The FCC’s allegations include that the carriers sold access to customers’…
FTC Prohibits InMarket Media from Selling Location Data
By Linn Foster Freedman on
Posted in Enforcement + Litigation
In a matter of weeks, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has settled another case against a company it alleges tracks consumers and sells their “precise location data” to third parties. This continues the FTC’s aggressive approach toward location-based consumer data.
According to the FTC’s complaint, Texas-based InMarket offered two apps to consumers: shopping rewards app…
Privacy Tip #347 – Do You Know What Geofencing Is and How You Are Tracked?
By Linn Foster Freedman on
Posted in Privacy Tips
If you don’t know what geofencing is, I will give you some articles to read so you can become better educated on exactly what it is and how it is used to track you. It’s all a bit creepy, but is a good thing to understand. The key to geofencing is users who leave their…
Location Data Industry Under Scrutiny for Inclusion of Planned Parenthood Clinics in their Services
By Kathryn Rattigan on
Posted in Data Privacy
INRIX, a company that provides location-based data analytics, has been collecting, analyzing, and selling aggregated vehicle, traffic, and parking data for over 17 years. Now, after the Roe v. Wade decision, INRIX is under scrutiny for its data collection tactics and the ability to view data related to Planned Parenthood clinics. In a brochure for…
Location Data Results in Resignation of High-Profile Church Official
By Kathleen Porter on
Posted in Data Privacy
Location data is data that marks the longitude/latitude location of a smartphone or other device at a particular time, or over a period of time. It works like this: each day our device, which has a unique identifier or ID, uses or connects to multiple location signals, like GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cell towers or other…
AT&T Sued by CA Customers for Selling Location Data to Aggregators
By Linn Foster Freedman on
Posted in Enforcement + Litigation
AT&T was sued this week in the Northern District of California by customers alleging that AT&T sold their location data to data aggregators without their consent. The proposed class action suit was filed on behalf of all AT&T wireless customers from 2011 to date.
The suit alleges that AT&T sold customers’ location data to LocationSmart…