Investigation Finds Telecom Companies Sold Sensitive Customer GPS Data

An investigation by Motherboard has found that an estimated 250 bounty hunters and related businesses had access to customer location data from AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint.

• By Jessica Davis
• Feb 12, 2019

An investigation by Motherboard has found that an estimated 250 bounty hunters and related businesses had access to customer location data from AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint.

Documents obtained by Motherboard show that telecommunications companies sold data intended for use by 911 operators and first responders to data aggregators, who then sold it to bounty hunters. In some cases, the GPS data was so accurate that a user could be tracked to specific locations inside a building.

According to Motherboard, between at least 2012 until it closed in late 2017, a now-defunct data seller called CerCareOne allowed bounty hunters, bail bondsmen and bail agents to access the real-time location of AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint cell phones. A source familiar with the company told investigators that the company would sometimes charge up to $1,100 per phone location.

CerCareOne customers were able to access data including a phone’s “assisted GPS” –or A-GPS—data, a technology used by first responders to find 911 callers in emergency situations.

Blake Reid, associate clinical professor at Colorado Law, told Motherboard that “with assisted GPS, your location can be triangulated within just a few meters. This allows constructing a detailed record of everywhere you travel.”

“The only reason we grant carriers any access to this information is to make sure that first responders are able to locate us in an emergency,” Reid said. “If the carriers are turning around and using that access to sell information to bounty hunters or whomever else, it is a shocking abuse of the trust that the public places in them to safeguard privacy while protecting public safety.”

A Sprint spokesperson did not directly answer whether the company has ever sold A-GPS data, and AT&T did not respond to a request to clarify whether it has ever sold A-GPS data. A T-Mobile spokesperson told Motherboard “We don’t have anything further to add at this stage.”

A list of one customer’s use of the phone location service, obtained by Motherboard, goes on for about 450 pages, listing more than 18,000 individual phone location requests in just over a year.

“This scandal keeps getting worse. Carriers assured customers location tracking abuses were isolated incidents. Now it appears that hundreds of people could track our phones, and they were doing it for years before anyone at the wireless companies took action,” Oregon Senator Ron Wyden said after being presented with Motherboard’s findings. “That’s more than an oversight—that’s flagrant, willful disregard for the safety and security of Americans.”

Motherboard’s full investigation can be read here.