How Wireless Carriers Get Permission to Share Your Whereabouts

Cellphone carriers usually ask for their customers’ blessing before listing their phone numbers, sharing their addresses or exposing them to promotional emails. But seeking permission to share one particularly sensitive piece of information—a cellphone’s current location—often falls to one of several dozen third-party companies like Securus Inc. and 3Cinteractive Corp. Carriers rely on those firms to vouch that they obtained users’ consent before handing over the data. The companies that pay to access this information use it for everything from preventing credit-card fraud to providing roadside assistance. That arrangement embarrassed the wireless industry after it was discovered that Securus, a prison phone operator, created a website that let law-enforcement agencies find the location of non-inmates without their permission. Blake Reid, an associate clinical professor at the University of Colorado Law School, said this “chained consent” process likely violates Section 222 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which sets privacy standards for carriers, though there hasn’t been a strong case to test his theory.