Suzanne Smalley reports:
The Federal Trade Commission announced its second settlement with a location data broker in as many weeks Thursday, signaling the agency is more aggressively policing the sector for peddling individuals’ most sensitive data to the highest bidder, often without informed consent.
The agency alleges that data aggregator InMarket Media improperly collected, used and stored consumers’ location data which it then packaged into specific audience segments for advertisers and stored for five years.
Under the terms of the settlement, the Texas-based data broker will be barred from selling or licensing precise location data and from “selling, licensing, transferring, or sharing any product or service that categorizes or targets consumers based on sensitive location data,” according to an agency press release.
Read more at The Record.