Data broker used phone location info to track Planned Parenthood visits, senator says
Dive Brief:
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Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., urged federal regulators to crack down on a data broker that allegedly used phone location information to track visits to reproductive health clinics and target users with anti-abortion advertising.
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In a letter sent Tuesday to chairs of the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Wyden said the firm Near Intelligence provided location data to an anti-abortion group that then targeted people who visited 600 Planned Parenthood clinics across 48 states.
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The call from the senator comes as the FTC has been sanctioning data brokers who sell location information without adequate consent or safeguards, arguing some data can be used to link users to their medical care.
Dive Insight:
In the letter, Wyden said his office began to investigate Near after an article published last spring in The Wall Street Journal found an anti-abortion group, the Veritas Society, was using geolocation data to target content — including ads suggesting users could “save” their pregnancies — to people who visited Planned Parenthood clinics.
The co-founder of Veritas’ advertising firm told Wyden’s staff they had utilized Near to draw boundaries around targeted clinics, according to the letter. Near’s chief privacy officer said the company didn’t have technical controls to prevent its customers from targeting visitors to sensitive places, like reproductive health clinics.
The data broker also sold location data to defense contractors who later resold information to the Defense Department and intelligence agencies, according to the letter.
Wyden urged FTC Chair Lina Khan to force Near, which recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, to delete its location and device data to ensure the information isn’t sold off to another broker.
The letter also pushed SEC Chair Gary Gensler to broaden an existing data breach-related investigation into the firm to determine whether Near also committed securities fraud.
Near didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.
The letter from Wyden comes as regulators and legislators have raised concerns about the availability of data that could link users to sensitive locations, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned a constitutional right to abortion.
“If a data broker could track Americans’ cell phones to help extremists target misinformation to people at hundreds of Planned Parenthood locations across the United States, a right-wing prosecutor could use that same information to put women in jail,” Wyden said in a statement.
Last month, the FTC banned Outlogic, formerly known as X-Mode Social, from sharing or selling sensitive information after the broker allegedly sold raw location data that could be used to track visits to places like medical or reproductive health clinics.
The regulator announced another similar proposed settlement against a data broker weeks later.
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