A federal appeals court has rejected T-Mobile’s attempt to overturn $92 million in fines imposed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for selling customer location information to third-party firms without consent. The FCC fined T-Mobile, along with AT&T and Verizon, for sharing access to customers’ location data without proper safeguards.
In 2018, real-time location data was leaked, but it took years for the FCC to finalize penalties. The three carriers appealed the ruling in different courts, with a US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit panel unanimously ruling against T-Mobile and its subsidiary Sprint.
The court’s decision states that every cell phone is a tracking device, as it periodically connects with nearby towers to send location data. This information creates an exhaustive record of a customer’s whereabouts, providing an intimate window into their life.
T-Mobile and Sprint sold customer location information to LocationSmart and Zumigo until 2019, without verifying if buyers had obtained customer consent. The carriers continued to sell the data despite discovering abuses by bad actors who accessed it without customers’ knowledge or consent.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/t-mobile-claimed-selling-location-data-without-consent-is-legal-judges-disagree