#venntel — Public Fediverse posts

"The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced sweeping action against some of the most important companies in the location data industry on Tuesday, including those that power surveillance tools used by a wide spread of U.S. law enforcement agencies and demanding they delete data related to certain sensitive areas like health clinics and places of worship.

Venntel, through its parent company Gravy Analytics, takes location data from smartphones, either through ordinary apps installed on them or through the advertising ecosystem, and then provides that data feed to other companies who sell location tracking technology to the government or sells the data directly itself. Venntel is the company that provides the underlying data for a variety of other government contractors and surveillance tools, including Locate X. 404 Media and a group of other journalists recently revealed Locate X could be used to pinpoint phones that visited abortion clinics.

The FTC says in a proposed order that Gravy and Venntel will be banned from selling, disclosing, or using sensitive location data, except in “limited circumstances” involving national security or law enforcement."

#USA #FTC #LocationData #Venntel #Gravy #DataBrokers #DataBrokerage #DataProtection #Privacy #Surveillance

https://www.404media.co/ftc-bans-location-data-company-that-powers-the-surveillance-ecosystem/

The United States Federal Trade Commission is taking action against two American #data #brokers accused of unlawfully trafficking in people’s sensitive location data.

The data was used, the agency says, to track Americans in and around churches, military bases, and doctors’ offices, among other protected sites.

It was sold not only for advertising purposes but also for political campaigns and government uses, including immigration enforcement.

#Mobilewalla, a Georgia-based data broker that’s said to have digitally tracked the residents of domestic abuse shelters, is accused by the agency of purposefully tracking protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
In a court filing, the FTC says Mobilewalla attempted to unmask the protesters’ racial identities by tracking their mobile devices to, for example, Hindu temples and Black churches

The FTC also accused #Gravy #Analytics and its subsidiary #Venntel of harvesting and exploiting consumers’ location data without consent, alleging that the company used that data to unfairly infer health decisions and religious beliefs.

According to the FTC, Gravy Analytics collected over 17 billion location signals from approximately a billion mobile devices daily.
It has reportedly sold access to that data to federal law enforcement agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
https://www.wired.com/story/ftc-mobilewalla-gravy-analytics-orders/