Security News > 2022 > August > US govt sues Kochava for selling sensitive geolocation data
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced today that it filed a lawsuit against Idaho-based data broker Kochava for selling sensitive and precise geolocation data collected from hundreds of millions of mobile devices.
The company provides access to consumers' location data through a data feed its clients can access via online data marketplaces after paying for a $25,000 subscription.
According to the complaint [PDF], Kochava promoted its data feed to its clients on the Amazon Web Services Marketplace as capable of providing "Rich geo data spanning billions of devices globally."
The data broker also claimed that its location data feed "Delivers raw latitude/longitude data with volumes around 94B+ geo transactions per month, 125 million monthly active users, and 35 million daily active users, on average observing more than 90 daily transactions per device."
"The FTC alleges that by selling data tracking people, Kochava is enabling others to identify individuals and exposing them to threats of stigma, stalking, discrimination, job loss, and even physical violence," the agency said today in a press release.
"The FTC's lawsuit seeks to halt Kochava's sale of sensitive geolocation data and require the company to delete the sensitive geolocation information it has collected."