this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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308
FTC bans X-Mode from selling phone location data, and orders firm to delete collected data (techcrunch.com)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 68 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

For those curious, the apps that sold your specific geolocation data were "Drunk Mode" and "Walk Against Humanity".

Edit: Although Wikipedia notes that X-Mode's SDK is in use in more than 400 apps. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Mode_social#cite_note-13

This is a big win for privacy advocates as well:

"By securing a first-ever ban on the use and sale of sensitive location data, the FTC is continuing its critical work to protect Americans from intrusive data brokers and unchecked corporate surveillance,” said Khan.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago (2 children)

And the fine...the fine...? Money is the only language they speak.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

They just lost a huge part of their buisness revenue permanently. The FTC prohibited them from selling their most valuable type of data, and from collecting it in the future.

This action will also cause all of these other data brokers to tighten up their likely shitty practices or be next, so this is a big privacy win in several directions.

That's an excellent fine. The FTC chair, Lina Khan, is an absolute beast. She is fighting mergers like a motherfucker and shutting shits like this down.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Ok. If I take 100 dollars off you each month until the police stop me. Stopping me is punishment enough because I lose revenue.

Talking money off you and taking your data and selling it on is different, but both are wrong and both should come with a punishment. Not just an order to stop.

In the EU they wouldn't have tried this in the first place, because they'd get fined.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

My main revenue isn't $100/month. It's a lot more l that I use to live indoors and eat. If you removed it, that would be a huge and consequential penalty. Its odd that you think losing a lot of money permanently is not a punishment.

As to the EU, the US has no such privacy laws. The FTC just established at least part of them with this action. Sad as it is, that's huge progress for this country that shouldnt be brushed off.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Let’s put this a different way. If I make a living robbing people, and get caught one time and only have to give the stuff back, what is my incentive to not continue robbing people? There is none.

Now the real question is, what is everyone else’s incentive to not rob people? They’ve seen what happens, they just have to give the stuff back. Worst case they make no money, best case they get rich easy.

So robbings continue unabated.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Do they not get shut down as a company if they continue collecting and selling data?

The first time you get caught, you give things back. The second time you are put to death. No?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Up to this point, robbing people wasent explicitly illegal.

Should the first person who is caught robbing people be imprisoned or should it be made explicitly clear to every robber that yes, robbing is illegal and we will enforce the law going forward?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

That isn’t what’s happening here, at all. These aren’t new regulations.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

permanetly

What stops them from doing it again?

What stops other busunesses from carrying on until their caught? No one is in jail.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Escalating enforcement? Why do you think the FTC can't add fines/jail time now that they have set strict rules?

Should the FTC have fined/jailed the company execs before it made its policy clear to at least one example like Xmode?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm not American but my understanding is the FTC has been toothless for 30 years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

It comes and goes with various administrations unfortunately. Since we basically cant pass any law that would cost a company $1 now, it falls to these executive agencies to make quasi laws with previously legally granted power to get anywhere near sanity.

This FTC has been heavy hitting because the biden admin has been putting mostly serious people into these roles.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Nah it's other people's money so it doesn't matter. Fines are just a business expense. Jail is the only thing that gets through.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago

Do Google next, you cowards.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Company must have refused to sell data to CIA or NSA

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

More like FBI or DEA. If the NSA wants it they just hack them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Probably easier to just buy it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Many agencies do that but it’s been established that the NSA simply takes data from companies of almost any size, domestic or foreign.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

I'm sure they do when it's not for sale.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

For at least one of its contracts, the FTC said that X-Mode provided an unnamed private clinical research company with information about consumers who had visited certain medical facilities, pharmacies or specialty infusion centers within a geographic area across Columbus, Ohio.

X-Mode also failed to ensure that users of its own apps — Drunk Mode and Walk Against Humanity — were fully informed about how their precise location data would be used, the FTC said.

“The information revealed through the location data that X-Mode/Outlogic sold not only violated consumers’ privacy but also exposed them to potential discrimination, physical violence, emotional distress, and other harms,” the FTC said in a statement.

“Geolocation data can reveal not just where a person lives and whom they spend time with but also, for example, which medical treatments they seek and where they worship,” said FTC chair Lina M. Khan.

“The FTC’s action against X-Mode makes clear that businesses do not have free license to market and sell Americans’ sensitive location data.”

Adherence to the FTC’s newly introduced policy will be ensured by implementing additional technical processes and will not require any significant changes to business or products.”

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