Tag Archives: Federal Communications Commission

Why You Should Opt Out of Sharing Data With Your Mobile Provider

March 20, 2023

A new breach involving data from nine million AT&T customers is a fresh reminder that your mobile provider likely collects and shares a great deal of information about where you go and what you do with your mobile device — unless and until you affirmatively opt out of this data collection. Here’s a primer on why you might want to do that, and how.
Certain questions might be coming to mind right now, like “What the heck is CPNI?” And, ‘If it’s so ‘customer proprietary,’ why is AT&T sharing it with marketers?” Also maybe, “What can I do about it?” Read on for answers to all three questions.

Who’s Behind Monday’s 14-State 911 Outage?

September 29, 2020

Emergency 911 systems were down for more than an hour on Monday in towns and cities across 14 U.S. states. The outages led many news outlets to speculate the problem was related to Microsoft’s Azure web services platform, which also was struggling with a widespread outage at the time. However, multiple sources tell KrebsOnSecurity the 911 issues stemmed from some kind of technical snafu involving Intrado and Lumen, two companies that together handle 911 calls for a broad swath of the United States.

FCC Proposes to Fine Wireless Carriers $200M for Selling Customer Location Data

February 28, 2020

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today proposed fines of more than $200 million against the nation’s four largest wireless carriers for selling access to their customers’ location information without taking adequate precautions to prevent unauthorized access to that data. While the fines would be among the largest the FCC has ever levied, critics say the penalties don’t go far enough to deter wireless carriers from continuing to sell customer location data.

Who Owns Your Wireless Service? Crooks Do.

August 7, 2019

Incessantly annoying and fraudulent robocalls. Corrupt wireless company employees taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to unlock and hijack mobile phone service. Wireless providers selling real-time customer location data, despite repeated promises to the contrary. A noticeable uptick in SIM-swapping attacks that lead to multi-million dollar cyberheists.

If you are somehow under the impression that you — the customer — are in control over the security, privacy and integrity of your mobile phone service, think again. And you’d be forgiven if you assumed the major wireless carriers or federal regulators had their hands firmly on the wheel.

Why Is Your Location Data No Longer Private?

May 26, 2018

The past month has seen one blockbuster revelation after another about how our mobile phone and broadband providers have been leaking highly sensitive customer information, including real-time location data and customer account details. In the wake of these consumer privacy debacles, many are left wondering who’s responsible for policing these industries? How exactly did we get to this point? What prospects are there for changes to address this national privacy crisis at the legislative and regulatory levels? These are some of the questions we’ll explore in this article.

Got Robocalled? Don’t Get Mad; Get Busy.

June 25, 2017

Several times a week my cell phone receives the telephonic equivalent of spam: A robocall. On each occasion the call seems to come from a local number, but when I answer there is that telltale pause followed by an automated voice pitching some product or service. So when I heard from a reader who chose to hang on the line and see where one of these robocalls led him, I decided to dig deeper. This is the story of that investigation. Hopefully, it will inspire readers to do their own digging and help bury this annoying and intrusive practice.

FCC Fines Cox $595K Over Lizard Squad Hack

November 6, 2015

In September 2014, I penned a column called “We Take Your Privacy and Security. Seriously.” It recounted my experience receiving notice from my former Internet service provider — Cox Communications — that a customer service employee had been tricked into giving away my personal information to hackers. This week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined Cox $595,000 for the incident that affected me and 60 other customers.

SWATting Incidents Tied to ID Theft Sites?

April 17, 2013

Many readers have been asking for an update on the “SWATting” incident at my home last month, in which someone claiming to be me called in a phony home invasion in progress at my address, prompting a heavily armed police response. There are two incremental developments on this story. The first is I’ve learned more about how the hoax was perpetrated. The second is that new evidence suggests that the same party or parties responsible also have been SWATting Hollywood celebrities and posting their personal information on site called exposed.re.

Toward a Culture of Security Measurement

September 2, 2010

“Our dependence on all things cyber as a society is now inestimably irreversible and irreversibly inestimable.”

Yeah, I had to re-read that line a few times, too. Which is probably why I’ve put off posting a note here about the article from which the above quote was taken, a thought-provoking essay in the Harvard National Security Journal by Dan Geer, chief information security philosopher officer for In-Q-Tel, the not-for-profit venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency.