Within the weeks for the reason that Federal Commerce Fee sued Kochava in late August for allegedly promoting delicate geolocation knowledge, some have questioned: Why Kochava?
Kochava isn’t the one advert tech firm with a location knowledge enterprise. And it arguably has (effectively, had) a decrease profile than SafeGraph, for instance, which has been excoriated within the press for promoting info tied to abortion clinic visits.
After the FTC filed its go well with, Jessica Lee, a accomplice on the legislation agency Loeb & Loeb and chair of its privateness, safety and knowledge improvements apply, made the purpose on Twitter that the FTC’s criticism towards Kochava learn like “an indictment of the enterprise mannequin greater than an indictment concerning the particular practices of 1 enterprise.”
As in, an indictment of advert tech.
Earlier this week, AdExchanger requested FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya throughout his keynote on the NAD’s convention on promoting legislation in Washington, DC, why the fee determined to concentrate on Kochava fairly than some other advert tech firm with a location knowledge enterprise.
And, based on Bedoya, Kochava was singled out for a purpose.
“I think you’re proper, that different corporations interact in the identical practices, however not all of them interact within the practices described in that criticism,” Bedoya mentioned. “That is likely one of the causes … I used to be desperate to help our motion towards that firm.”
The FTC’s reasoning
One of many major assertions in the FTC’s criticism is that the information Kochava lists in its knowledge market, often known as the Kochava Collective, isn’t anonymized – and uncooked knowledge isn’t good to your well being.
The FTC contends that Kochava didn’t adequately shield its knowledge from public publicity and that, till at the least June 2022, the corporate allowed anybody with an AWS account to simply receive a free knowledge pattern and entry to extra knowledge containing info tied to tens of tens of millions of cellular advert IDs.
This knowledge may then be mixed with different knowledge (like somebody’s dwelling handle from public information or an inference based mostly on the truth that a particular cell phone spends each evening in the identical bodily place) to determine people and monitor their visits to delicate areas, together with dependancy restoration amenities, reproductive well being clinics and locations of worship.
What the criticism doesn’t say is whether or not this was really taking place – however the potential for hurt was sufficient for the FTC to take motion.
And there may be precedent for the FTC taking a stand towards the use or potential use of delicate knowledge in a means that buyers wouldn’t fairly count on.
That is in line with different FTC instances like Sears and Vizio the place the FTC has mentioned that *delicate* knowledge carries heightened protections — secondary processing unrelated to the transaction and never on the route of the patron could also be per se unlawful. https://t.co/HfZMA4Dk9V pic.twitter.com/tf1z0W3qPL
— Justin Brookman (@JustinBrookman) August 29, 2022
Setting an instance
And talking of precedent, that’s one more reason why Bedoya voted in favor of submitting the criticism towards Kochava. (The top vote was 4-1 in favor, with outgoing FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips as the one dissenting opinion.)
Though FTC Chair Lina Khan units the fee’s total technique, Bedoya mentioned that he’s “significantly curious about” instances like Kochava “the place precedents could possibly be established that might inform trade as a complete.”
Bedoya couldn’t say far more, as a result of the Kochava case is actively in litigation, however he did say that when instances with the potential to create precedent land on his desk, “these are those I spend essentially the most time on, essentially the most time finding out and essentially the most time speaking to [FTC] employees about.”
