Following ICCL research, and submission with Open Markets and the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue, the U.S. FTC acts against RTB firm Mobilewalla 

4 December 2024
Updated 16 December

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has ordered several RTB data broker firms to stop collecting data from the online advertising “Real-Time Bidding” (RTB) system. RTB operates the majority of advertising on the Internet.

One of the firms, Mobilewalla, claims to have 5 years of data from 1.9 billion people’s devices, and creates dossiers about American’s most intimate characteristics.[1]

Lina Kahn, Chair of the FTC, said ICCL 2022 report America's Hidden Security Crisis "revealed the relative ease with which foreign adversaries can gather sensitive data on Americans".[2]

n November 2022, ICCL highlighted the dangers of Mobilewalla to the FTC in a submission together with the Open Markets Institute and the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue, a forum of 75 NGOs.

ICCL Enforce, Open Markets, and the TACD, are delighted that the FTC has now acted.

Dr Johnny Ryan, Director of ICCL Enforce, said: “This FTC action against Mobilewalla is an important step in shutting down the free-for-all of sensitive data that exposes America to national security vulnerability and exposes every American to the discrimination, manipulation, and private and government surveillance. We commend the FTC for acting”. 

The online advertising “Real-Time Bidding” (RTB) system broadcasts Americans’ GPS coordinates and what they are doing online 107 trillion times a year. RTB is the dominant technology of online advertising, and triggers almost every time a person loads a webpage or uses an app.

• This exposes people to significant risk with examples like predatory profiling of a suicidal gambling addict, county sheriffs buying live feeds of people’s locations, and data on victims of sexual abuse being made available to buy.
• Every year criminals exploit tracking-based advertising systems to steal billions of dollars from businesses who unknowingly pay to show ads to bots.
• Surveillance advertising also poses significant national security risks: Google and other RTB companies broadcast the locations of Americans to entities across the globe, putting sensitive personnel and their institutions at risk of blackmail and hacking.

The FTC's explainer on RTB cites Dr. Ryan's previous RTB work before joining ICCL.

See ICCL's action file on Real-Time Bidding for detail about how RTB works, and what we are doing about it.

Notes 

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220315084058/https://www.mobilewalla.com/

[2] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/statement-khan-bedoya-slaughter-mobilewalla.pdf