VZ Verizon Communications Inc

By Drew FitzGerald and Sarah Krouse 

Verizon Communications Inc. said Tuesday it will end a location-sharing program after it found at least one company revealed its subscribers' whereabouts without their consent.

The top U.S. wireless carrier by subscribers said it would soon stop sharing customers' locations with LocationSmart and Zumigo Inc. in response to questions from Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), who wrote all four national wireless operators last month asking them about their privacy practices.

"We will not enter into new location aggregation arrangements unless and until we are comfortable that we can adequately protect our customers' location data," Verizon privacy chief Karen Zacharia wrote in a June 15 letter to Sen. Wyden.

The move followed news that a prison telephone company called Securus Technologies had expanded a service designed to monitor inmate calls with a website that let sheriffs and corrections officers find any cellphone user's location without a court order. Verizon said that unauthorized service had accessed the information through another third-party service that in turn obtained the data from LocationSmart.

Representatives of LocationSmart, Zumigo and Securus didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

AT&T Inc., Sprint Corp. and T-Mobile US Inc. also said in separate letters to Sen. Wyden that they curtailed Securus access to customer-location data but stopped short of cutting off LocationSmart.

Wireless companies typically share their customers' locations with emergency responders in specific situations. The operators say other uses are subject to customers' explicit consent.

Securus wasn't the only company accused of mishandling location information. A Carnegie Mellon University researcher in May found similar data potentially exposed via LocationSmart's website.

Robert Xiao, the researcher who discovered the flaw on LocationSmart's website, said wireless companies often say they only share customer information with their consent. This incident "calls that assumption into question," he said.

More than 100 companies ranging from truck fleet operators to online lotteries draw on location data that ultimately flows from LocationSmart, Mario Proietti, the company's chief executive, said in a May interview.

He said LocationSmart logs each location request made through its system, though he declined to say how many times Securus pulled device users' locations through its on-demand portal.

"All our location is on request," except for developers testing the system, he said. "There's not tracking going on."

"Verizon deserves credit for taking quick action to protect its customers' privacy and security," Sen. Wyden said in a statement Tuesday.

Write to Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com and Sarah Krouse at sarah.krouse@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 19, 2018 12:51 ET (16:51 GMT)

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