Source: New York Times
Verizon, AT&T and Sprint said Tuesday that they would sharply limit arrangements that give marketers and other businesses access to cellphone customers’ location data, after disclosures that the information was used to track people without their consent.
Verizon announced its change in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, who has been investigating location privacy issues. He had asked Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile to audit their relationships with companies that buy and sell access to consumer location data, known as location aggregators.
“As a result of this review, we are initiating a process to terminate our existing agreements for the location aggregator program,” Verizon’s chief privacy officer, Karen Zacharia, wrote in the letter. Some data sharing, such as for fraud prevention and call routing, will continue, she wrote.
An AT&T spokesman, Michael Balmoris, said the company would end work with the data companies “as soon as practical in a way that preserves important, potential lifesaving services like emergency roadside assistance.”
A Sprint spokeswoman said the company was “beginning the process of terminating its current contracts” with location aggregators. T-Mobile, the nation’s third-largest wireless company, behind Verizon and…
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