Mobile Phone Carriers Ring Up $20 Million FCC Proposed Penalty for Lax Privacy and Security

The FCC hit Q Link Wireless LLC and Hello Mobile Telecom LLC with a proposed penalty of $20 million in 2023 for failing to protect the privacy and security of people’s information. FCC rules require service providers to authenticate who someone is before giving them access to personal information and require the use of reasonable data security standards. The mobile phone carriers’ apparent violation of those rules placed customers “at increased risk for privacy violations and bad actor’s potential misuse of their sensitive personal data.” FCC Enforcement Chief and Head of the Privacy and Data Protection Task Force made it clear that this enforcement action should put all telecommunications service providers “on notice that protecting customers’ data should be their highest priority, and we will use our authorities to ensure that they comply with their obligations to do so.”