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That's not a revenue stream at any cell phone carrier I've seen. They do what they are legally obliged to do, and while they do get paid for it, it's a fraction of the actual cost of providing the data. The state tends to drive the hell of a bargain. The service providers, such as Facebook, Google and Apple though, that's entirely different.


Almost all telcos in the US sell data to brokers.

Like for example, when they got caught selling location data they were required to protect. [0]

[0] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/29/fcc_telecom_fines/


Verizon silently opted everyone into sharing their browser history (based on DNS I guess) with advertisers: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/12/veriz...

I have to imagine that the other companies are doing this as well.


Warmer, think of the other vector, from the data broker point of view…




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