United States of America: Reached settlement in FTC Investigation into X-Mode Social and Outlogic for allegedly selling sensitive location data without consumer consent

On 9 January 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it reached a settlement agreement with data broker X-Mode Social and its successor, Outlogic. Under the reached settlement, the company is prohibited from sharing or selling any sensitive location data. The FTC alleged that the companies sold precise location data that could be used to track people’s visits to sensitive locations such as medical and reproductive health clinics, places of religious worship, and domestic abuse shelters. The FTC also stated that the companies failed to implement reasonable and appropriate safeguards on the use of such information by third parties. Furthermore, the company is required to delete the location data it stores, establish a supplier assessment program to verify that the consumers consented to the data collection, selling and processing and enable the consumer to request the deletion of their data and to whom it was sold.