FTC asks companies to knock off misleading data claims

The Federal Trade Commision has stern words for data brokers: If you claim that your data is anonymous, it better be. Or else.

Kristin Cohen, acting associate director of the FTC’s privacy and identity division, dedicated an entire blog on Monday to “location, health, and other sensitive” data, which mobile devices collect and advertisers routinely use to…well, and it’s hard to sugarcoat this—know exactly where you are and what you do, in the interest of targeting you with relevant ads.

Cohen did not mince words: “Companies may try to placate consumers’ privacy concerns by claiming they anonymize or aggregate data. Firms making claims about anonymization should be on guard that these claims can be a deceptive trade practice and violate the FTC Act when untrue,” she wrote. “Companies that make false claims about anonymization can expect to hear from the FTC.”

To back up the claim, Cohen pointed to an oft-cited study that found that, under certain circumstances, 95% of 1.5 million people in a dataset were “uniquely identifiable” through “four location points with timestamps.”

So, even if advertisers aggregate or anonymize their data, it can still potentially be used in very problematic ways.

Why it matters: Concerns around location data, personal privacy, and digital advertising writ large have been thrust in the spotlight since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, considering precise location data could and has been used to target people seeking an abortion.—RB