Verizon to Cut Off Data Providers That Gave Up Customer Locations -- 2nd Update
June 19 2018 - 1:22PM
Dow Jones News
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.
Ending those partnerships will take several weeks to a couple of
months, a Verizon spokesman said.
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 13:07 ET (17:07 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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