Here's How Long Your Wireless Carrier Holds on to Your Location Data
The Federal Communications Commission has shared some significant digits: How many years wireless carriers keep location data about their customers.
Earlier this summer, FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel sent a series of inquiries to carriers and resellers about their data privacy policies, specifying an Aug. 3 deadline for replies. The commission shared their replies(Opens in a new window) last week.
The data point to focus on in each response from a wireless service is how long it keeps historical cell site location information (CSLI), since cell towers have to know your location to provide you with service at all (although one reseller called Invisiv is now marketing a service that changes your phone’s identifier to thwart long-term tracking).
Until the 2018 Supreme Court ruling in Carpenter v. United States, law-enforcement investigators didn’t need a court-issued warrant to get CSLI from carriers. And this location data remains a non-trivlal privacy risk even with that higher barrier to government curiosity.
AT&T’s response (PDF(Opens in a new window)) reveals that it still holds this data for longer than its two big rivals, specifying “a retention period of no more than 13 months for information that identifies the current or past location of a specific individual’s device and five years for historical call detail records, which include cell site location information.”
AT&T also noted that it has Android smartphone vendors embed IQI software in device firmware that “collects device diagnostic and location data on a passive basis (e.g., when a device powers on or contacts a new cell tower), including latitude/longitude information.”
T-Mobile’s reply (PDF(Opens in a new window)) cites a retention period of “up to 24
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