
InMobi Settles FTC Charges for Tracking Consumer Locations without Permission - walterbell
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/06/mobile-advertising-network-inmobi-settles-ftc-charges-it-tracked
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rosser
So, let's see, a $950k penalty for illegally tracking "hundreds of millions"
of consumers' locations works out to ... ($.0095, $.00095)/consumer.

I'll bet InMobi really feels chastised now! Thanks, FTC; you sure showed them!

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I guess the question is, how much value did InMobi get per customer from those
acts of illegal tracking?

~~~
rosser
Do you honestly think it was on the order of half a cent per, or close enough
that this penalty has teeth?

Several months ago, Verizon was fined $1.3m for their UIDH "super cookies".
That worked out to _half a minute_ of their revenue for 2015 — for a program
that had been in place _since 2012_. These penalties are meaningless. They're
press release fodder for the company paying them, to be able to say to people,
"Gosh, I guess we were naughty. We're really, really sorry. See how contrite
we are? You can totally still trust us!"

The lawyer who negotiated that settlement for Vz probably got a bigger bonus
than the fine the company paid.

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jackmaney
> InMobi was subject to a $4 million civil penalty, which was lowered to
> $950,000 "based on the company's financial condition," the FTC said in a
> statement issued Wednesday, without elaborating.

Why should the penalty be reduced based upon InMobi's finances? If the fine
bankrupts them, all the better!

Edit: Honestly, I don't know why companies can't be fined based upon a
percentage of revenue taken over, say, the past year. A fine of 10% yearly
revenue would actually make these bastards sit up and pay attention.

~~~
whamlastxmas
Revenue based fines aren't necessarily always going to be fair because some
companies focus on revenue more than others, and it's not fair to penalize
them for that.

My guess as to why they lowered the fine is because the FTC doesn't want to
appear as though they are deliberately bankrupting companies in efforts to
simply make them go away. Things could get way too political at that point,
and people could start trying to influence the FTC to bankrupt their
competition.

~~~
0xmohit
What is the difference between stealing money from one's pocket/locker, and
stealing information about someone? In both cases, one is doing it for profit.
The only difference is that in the latter, you utilize the information to make
money.

The amount of fine appears ridiculous. The FTC might as well could come out
and say that there's no violation here as we do not want to appear as being on
a witchhunt.

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palakchokshi
If it is doing this in the US and got caught what kind of information must
they be collecting in other countries where the laws are not so well defined
and/or enforced?

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sctb
We updated the submission link from
[http://www.infodocket.com/2016/06/22/privacy-ftc-says-
mobile...](http://www.infodocket.com/2016/06/22/privacy-ftc-says-mobile-ad-
provider-tracked-hundreds-of-millions-of-consumers-locations-without-
permission/), which just quoted the FTC's press release.

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epoxyhockey
_[...] InMobi collected nearby basic service set identification addresses,
which act as unique serial numbers for wireless access points. The company
[...] then fed each BSSID into a "geocorder" database to infer the phone
user's latitude and longitude_

The author of this article might need a new technical advisor.

~~~
teej
Why exactly? It says that the company was inferring location based on nearby
wireless networks. Does your quote not accurately reflect that?

~~~
epoxyhockey
1) _geocorder_ , with a random "r"

2) you don't plug in a BSSID into a geocoder, you would use something like
wigle.net to go from BSSID -> lat/long

~~~
teej
1) Typos happen

2) That's why geocoder is in quotes. It's a system that performs an operation
similar to a geocoder.

