Massachusetts lawmakers are weighing a near total ban on buying and selling consumers' mobile device location data, which would be the first such ban in the US
On the other hand, everyone from your cell phone provider to the DMV sells your data without any scrutiny of these practices. … Dustin Volz / @dustinvolz@journa.host : Massachusetts lawmakers are weighing a near total ban on buying and selling of location data drawn from consumers' mobile devices in the state, in what would be a first-in-the-nation effort to rein in a billion-dollar industry. — https://www.wsj.com/... Twitter: Prakash Sangam / @mytechmusings : This is an excellent step... https://twitter.com/... Threads: Alex Stamos / @alex.stamos : Every other privacy issue people discuss pales in comparison to the fact that the cell network you pay $100+/month for service is straight up selling your real-time physical location. I once saw a private investigator working on a child safety case just open up a website and find exactly where the guy was just with a phone number. … Forums: Hacker News : First U.S. ban on sale of cellphone location data might be coming Msmash / Slashdot : First US Ban on Sale of Cellphone Location Data Might Be Coming
Context & Ripple Effects
The proposal follows years of reporting that exposed how readily mobile-location information could be obtained through intermediary chains, including a 2019 investigation into easy access to real-time cellphone locations.
It also targets a market whose collectors, aggregators, and marketplaces were mapped as a multibillion-dollar location-data industry. Earlier platform restrictions did not end the trade because brokers could buy data from app developers directly, according to reporting on brokers’ workarounds.
First-order effects
- The bill would put location-data brokers, app developers, carriers, and public-data sources serving Massachusetts consumers under a potential prohibition on buying and selling this data.
- If enacted, customers of location-data marketplaces would lose a lawful in-state supply channel, while state enforcement would become a central constraint on transactions involving Massachusetts devices.
Second-order effects
- Data brokers and their buyers would need to reassess data provenance and geographic filtering, since a state-level restriction makes pooled, multi-state datasets harder to treat as uniformly tradable.
- The measure would test whether platform policies and voluntary limits can contain downstream resale, or whether statutory restrictions are needed where data can be acquired directly from app developers.
Third-order effects
- If similar measures spread, the location-data business could shift from a lightly constrained resale market toward jurisdiction-specific compliance, consent, and data-minimization requirements.
- The broader policy question would move beyond individual company practices to whether location traces are a category of consumer data that should be commercially transferable at all.
The trend: This is one data point in a shift from platform-led privacy controls toward laws that restrict the underlying market for sensitive behavioral data.