The Federal Trade Commission announced a $28 million penalty against data broker PrecisionTrack Inc. for collecting and selling precise location data from over 60 million mobile devices without obtaining meaningful consumer consent.
The FTC's complaint alleges that PrecisionTrack harvested GPS data through embedded SDKs in popular weather and navigation apps, then sold that data to advertisers, hedge funds, and law enforcement agencies without disclosing these practices to users.
As part of the settlement, PrecisionTrack must delete all previously collected location data and implement an opt-in consent framework verified by an independent auditor for the next 20 years.
