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Presumably, Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina M. Khan is grateful the weekend is finally here, as her agency has wrapped up a big week.
On Monday, the agency brought a lawsuit against Kochava, a data broker, for allegedly collecting and selling location data “that can be used to trace the movements of individuals to and from sensitive locations” like reproductive-health clinics and places of worship.
Rewind: The suit wasn’t that surprising considering that Kochava sued the FTC *checks notes* several weeks ago in anticipation of the lawsuit, at the time describing the move as a “manipulative attempt…to give the appearance that it is protecting consumer privacy despite being based on completely false pretenses” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Kochava has two businesses: a data marketplace and a measurement service.
- The FTC’s suit is aimed squarely at its data marketplace, which Kochava said is sourced entirely from third-parties and not Kochava itself, explained Kochava’s CEO Charles Manning in an open letter. The company said it has created products specifically designed to block data collection from healthcare locations.
- “In principle we agree with the FTC that blocking sensitive locations is a good idea but there is no specificity on what is defined as ‘sensitive’ and what locations meet that criteria,” he wrote.
Still, in its own lawsuit, Kochava argued that anyone who downloads apps—and agrees to share their location data—should know better.
- “The consumer agreed to share its location data with an app developer. As such, the consumer should reasonably expect that this data will contain the consumer’s locations, even locations which the consumer deems is sensitive,” the complaint read.
By the end of the week, many were wondering: Why Kochava? And though we don’t know the answer yet, the FTC’s lawsuit could put the entire location data collection industry under the microscope.
But wait, there’s more! In non-privacy news, on Thursday the agency hit Credit Karma with a $3 million fine for allegedly targeting users with ads that told them they were “pre-approved” for credit cards even when they weren’t. The company will return that money to users who “wasted time applying for these credit cards.”—RB