U.S. court upholds Verizon $46.9 million fine over location data

A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s $46.9 million fine against U.S. wireless carrier Verizon Communications for illegally sharing access to customers’ location information.

A three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Verizon’s argument, saying “the customer data at issue plainly qualifies as customer proprietary network information.”

In April 2024, the FCC fined the largest U.S. wireless carriers nearly $200 million in total over mishandling customers’ location information.

The FCC last year finalized penalties first proposed in February 2020, including the Verizon fine, as well as $80 million for T-Mobile; $12 million for Sprint, which T-Mobile has since acquired and $57 million for AT&T.

Verizon, which paid the penalty and filed a legal challenge, did not immediately comment.

The carriers sold “real-time location information to data aggregators, allowing this highly sensitive data to wind up in the hands of bail-bond companies, bounty hunters, and other shady actors,” then FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said last year.

All the carriers last year vowed to challenge the fines.

Carriers previously allowed the use of location data for programs like roadside assistance, logistics, medical emergency alert services, human trafficking alerts and fraud prevention.

The FCC said carriers relied on contract-based assurances that service providers would obtain consent from carriers’ customers before accessing location information.

Lawmakers in 2019 expressed outrage that aggregators were able to buy user data from wireless carriers and sell “location-based services to a wide variety of companies” and others, including bounty hunters.

The FCC said last year that even after being made aware of unauthorized access, the carriers continued to operate programs without adopting reasonable safeguards.