Data company sued by US government amid fears of sensitive location tracking

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Monday sued Idaho-based data broker Kochava for selling geolocation data from hundreds of millions of mobile devices that could be used to track consumers.

The FTC said Kochava buys vast troves of location information from other data brokers across hundreds of millions of mobile devices that is packaged into customized data. They then sell that data to clients including retailers looking at foot traffic.

Congressional committees have also reached a compromise on the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, which would limit the data broker industry by putting protections around sensitive data like geolocation and by enabling people to demand companies delete data collected on them. However, as Politico reported, the data broker industry has ramped up its lobbying in response to the bill in an effort to soften some of the data-sharing restrictions.