The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued the Idaho-based location data broker called Kochava after it sold sensitive and accurate geolocation information online. The company gathered the geolocation data offered by the broker from millions of mobile devices.
Based on reports, potential Kochava customers could use the information to identify and keep tabs on a mobile user’s movements to and from several locations, such as addiction recovery warehouses or shelters for domestic violence victims or the homeless.
In addition, the company gives access to the customers’ location data via data feed its clients could check through data marketplaces after subscribing for $25k.
The Kochava data broker endorsed its feed to AWS.
According to FTC’s complaint, the data broker Kochava promoted its data information to its clients on the Amazon Web Services Marketplace. This marketplace could reach millions of users; hence the geolocation data could span billions of devices worldwide.
Kochava also claimed that its location data feed provides raw latitude and longitude infrastructure of approximately 94 billion monthly transactions. The data broker also has more than 120 million monthly active users and nearly 35 million daily users, which results in almost a hundred daily transactions per device.
However, the FTC did not take it lightly since Kochava allows others to identify users and expose them to threats such as stalking, job loss, discrimination, violence, and stigma. Furthermore, the alarming part of this data exposure is that it can identify the households of a device’s user in some marketing materials.
The US government’s lawsuit looks to obstruct Kochava’s offer of sensitive geolocation data and require the firm to remote the sensitive geolocation information it harvested from mobile devices.
Information as sensitive as geolocation data is very hostile for most users if it reaches the wrong hands. Moreover, anyone who requests a free sample can have terrible consequences since most users who know this data can exploit it. Fortunately, FTC had identified and addressed this issue before any known compromise happened.
