Several House Republicans are asking T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint how they share their users' cellphone location data, citing a recent report that telecoms are selling that information to shadowy companies without customer knowledge.
The lawmakers said they are troubled because it is not the first report of these types of data-sharing practices. They also sent letters to the data brokers mentioned in last week's Motherboard report, Zumigo and Microbilt.
Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., the chairman of the House energy and commerce committee, says that because of the government shutdown, the Federal Communications Commission chairman would not brief House staff on what the agency plans to do.
An FCC spokesman says it will continue to investigate wireless carriers' handling of location information when its operations are back to normal.
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