Verizon to end location data sales to brokers

Verizon is pledging to stop selling information on phone owners’ locations to data brokers, stepping back from a business practice that has drawn criticism for endangering privacy. The data has allowed outside companies to pinpoint the location of wireless devices without their owners’ knowledge or consent. Verizon said that about 75 companies have been obtaining its customer data from two little-known CA-based brokers that Verizon supplies directly — LocationSmart and Zumigo.

Though Verizon is the first major U.S. wireless carrier to end sales of such data to brokers that then provide it to others, Verizon did not say it was getting out of the business of selling location data. Verizon’s chief privacy officer, Karen Zacharia, said the company would be careful not to disrupt “beneficial services” such as fraud prevention and would “work with these aggregators to ensure a smooth transition for these beneficial services to alternative arrangements so as to minimize the harm to customers and end users.” The nation’s largest mobile carrier made its disclosure in a letter to Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR), who has been probing the phone location-tracking market.