The FCC announced approximately $196 million in forfeiture penalties on April 29, 2024, against AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint. The agency said the carriers unlawfully disclosed or provided access to customers’ real-time location information without appropriate consent and without reasonable safeguards against unauthorized disclosure.
The headline often names only AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, but the total also included a separate Sprint penalty. A June 4, 2026, Supreme Court ruling addressed the constitutional procedure used for the AT&T and Verizon cases; it did not automatically resolve every underlying factual or legal dispute, and the T-Mobile/Sprint petition remained pending as of August 18, 2026.
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The short version
The FCC’s case was not simply that the carriers “sold everyone’s GPS data.” According to the agency, the carriers allowed third parties to access carrier-held, real-time or near-real-time location information through location-based-service arrangements and data aggregators. The FCC said the carriers failed to obtain legally sufficient consent for the relevant disclosures and failed to maintain reasonable controls over downstream access.
The penalties announced in 2024 were:
| Carrier | FCC penalty |
|---|---|
| AT&T | More than $57 million |
| Verizon | Almost $47 million |
| T-Mobile | More than $80 million |
| Sprint | More than $12 million |
| Total | Approximately $196 million |
The FCC’s announcement described the total as nearly $200 million. The wording matters: these were government forfeiture penalties, not customer compensation or a class-action settlement.
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What the FCC said the carriers did
Wireless carriers can determine the approximate location of a connected device from information generated by the mobile network. The FCC said the carriers provided access to that information to location-based-service providers and aggregators, including LocationSmart and Zumigo, without sufficient consent and without reasonable safeguards to prevent unauthorized disclosure.
The alleged chain could look roughly like this:
- A wireless carrier holds network-derived location information.
- The carrier provides access to a location-service provider or data aggregator.
- A downstream customer requests location information for a particular purpose.
- Weak consent verification or downstream controls allow access beyond what the customer reasonably expected.
The precise parties, permissions and data flows differed among the arrangements. The FCC’s position, explained in its forfeiture materials, was that the carriers had a duty to protect customer information and control third-party access.
That is different from saying that hackers broke into a carrier database. This enforcement action concerned disclosure and access through commercial or service relationships, not necessarily a conventional cybersecurity breach.
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Why the Securus episode mattered
The investigation followed reports involving Securus, a company serving correctional facilities. The FCC said carrier location information made available through a Securus location-finding service reached a Missouri sheriff and was used to track individuals.
The episode illustrated the practical risk of a long data chain: information supplied for one location-based service could become available to a downstream user in a way the individual being tracked did not expect. It does not establish that every customer was individually tracked by a sheriff, bounty hunter or other recipient. The documented issue was the carriers’ provision of access and the safeguards governing later use.
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Why network location data is sensitive
Location information can reveal where someone lives, works, worships, receives medical care or regularly travels. In the wrong hands, that information can facilitate stalking, intimidation, surveillance or physical harm. The FCC’s historical materials describe geolocation as especially sensitive for those reasons.
“Location data” is not one single category. The FCC case involved carrier-held network location information, which should be distinguished from:
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- App location data: Controlled partly through an operating system’s app-permission settings.
- Platform location history: Stored in an account such as a mapping or mobile-platform account.
- Cell-site location information obtained by law enforcement: Accessed through a separate legal and technical process.
- Advertising or broker-inferred location: Estimated from signals such as IP addresses, Wi-Fi, advertising identifiers or other datasets.
These sources can overlap, but they are not interchangeable. Turning off an app’s location permission does not necessarily prevent a wireless network from knowing the approximate location of a connected device.
What “without consent” meant here
The FCC was not saying that customers had never agreed to any location-related term. Rather, its allegation concerned whether the carriers had obtained appropriate, legally sufficient authorization for the particular disclosures and whether they had adequately verified that authorization.
A customer might consent to a location feature in one context without consenting to unrelated access by another party. The dispute therefore involved the scope, quality and verification of consent—not merely whether a customer had ever clicked “Agree” on a location-service screen.
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Why Section 222 was central
The FCC relied on Section 222 of the Communications Act and related FCC customer-proprietary-network-information rules. In plain English, the provision governs how telecommunications carriers must protect and use certain customer information generated through their services.
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The FCC’s legal theory was that the relevant location information fell within the customer information the carriers were required to keep confidential and that the carriers’ disclosures and safeguards did not satisfy those obligations. That description reflects the agency’s enforcement position; it is not a substitute for legal advice about a particular customer’s rights.
Why Sprint appears separately
Sprint was acquired by T-Mobile in 2020, after the conduct under investigation but before the FCC’s final 2024 announcement. The FCC therefore treated T-Mobile’s and Sprint’s conduct as separate matters and listed separate forfeitures.
That is why a three-carrier headline can be misleading. The commonly cited approximately $196 million total includes four penalties:
- More than $57 million for AT&T.
- Almost $47 million for Verizon.
- More than $80 million for T-Mobile’s conduct.
- More than $12 million for Sprint’s conduct.
How the carriers responded
The carriers disputed the FCC’s conclusions and indicated that they intended to appeal. AT&T characterized the order as lacking legal and factual merit. Verizon likewise said the FCC had gotten the facts and law wrong. Those are the companies’ positions, not established findings about what occurred.
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The dispute can be separated into several questions:
- Underlying conduct: What information was disclosed, to whom and under what safeguards?
- Consent: Whether the relevant customer authorization was legally sufficient.
- Agency authority: Whether the FCC could impose the forfeitures under the Communications Act.
- Constitutional procedure: Whether the FCC’s administrative process violated the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.
- Collection or payment: Whether and when particular penalties become payable after further litigation.
What the Supreme Court decided in 2026
On June 4, 2026, the Supreme Court decided FCC v. AT&T, No. 25-406, together with Verizon Communications Inc. v. FCC, No. 25-567. The carriers argued that the FCC’s procedure for imposing monetary forfeitures raised a Seventh Amendment jury-trial problem.
The Court held that FCC forfeiture orders under Section 503(b) do not definitively resolve the parties’ legal obligations and that the FCC’s factual findings are not conclusive in the same way as a final judicial judgment. On that basis, the agency could issue the forfeiture orders without a jury.
The judgments were not identical:
- AT&T: The Supreme Court reversed the Fifth Circuit’s decision and remanded the case.
- Verizon: The Supreme Court affirmed the Second Circuit judgment, rejecting the relevant constitutional challenge to the FCC’s procedure.
It would therefore be too broad to say that the Supreme Court simply “upheld all the fines” or “threw out AT&T’s fine.” The ruling resolved an important procedural and constitutional issue. It did not, by itself, establish that every factual allegation or statutory question surrounding the location-data practices was beyond further challenge.
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T-Mobile and Sprint pursued a separate Supreme Court petition, filed June 22, 2026. As of August 18, 2026, the petition remained pending, and the government’s response deadline had been extended to August 26, 2026. The docket is available from the Supreme Court.
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Accordingly, the entire approximately $196 million enforcement action should not be described as finally resolved based only on the AT&T and Verizon decision. The AT&T case was remanded, Verizon’s procedural challenge failed, and the T-Mobile/Sprint petition was still pending at the stated date.
What this means for customers
The FCC action does not automatically give subscribers a refund, claim form or individual payment. It was a government enforcement action, not a customer-compensation program.
Customers can still take practical privacy steps:
- Read the current privacy notice for the carrier and any location-based service being used.
- Review location-service permissions in the carrier account, device settings and individual apps.
- Remove unnecessary third-party location access.
- Use applicable state privacy-rights mechanisms where available, such as access, deletion or opt-out requests.
- Keep records and seek regulatory or legal assistance if a carrier or data broker appears to have mishandled personal information.
Those steps have limits. A VPN generally does not prevent a mobile carrier from processing network-derived location information. Disabling GPS, changing an app permission or opting out of advertising tracking may reduce particular forms of tracking, but none should be presented as a guaranteed way to stop carrier-level location visibility.
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The case shows why privacy risk often arises from the chain connecting a carrier, an aggregator and a downstream customer—not only from the original company holding the data. Consent verification, purpose limits, access logs and restrictions on downstream use can determine whether sensitive information stays within its expected context.
It also highlights the gap between a large headline penalty and a customer’s personal financial outcome. The approximately $196 million figure signals serious regulatory concern, but it does not tell an individual subscriber whether the carrier’s practices changed, whether a particular record was accessed or whether the subscriber is entitled to compensation. Those questions require separate, current evidence.
For consumers, the most accurate takeaway is narrow but important: the FCC said the carriers failed to protect and properly authorize access to sensitive network location information; the 2026 Supreme Court ruling preserved the agency’s forfeiture procedure against the constitutional challenge in the AT&T and Verizon cases; and the broader enforcement fight was not fully settled as of August 18, 2026.
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