The settlement comes over three years after Google and Apple banned X-Mode Social’s tracking software from their app stores. | Image: The Verge / Alex Castro
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has prohibited Outlogic, the massive US data broker formerly known as X-Mode Social, from selling or sharing sensitive information that can be used to track people’s locations as part of the regulator’s first data tracking settlement. The settlement is intended to resolve accusations made by the FTC that Outlogic “did not implement reasonable or appropriate safeguards” to prevent the location information it sold from being mishandled by third parties and potentially endangering consumers.
According to the FTC, the data associated with mobile advertising that Outlogic sold to hundreds of clients wasn’t anonymized and was capable of tracking specific individuals to sensitive locations like domestic…