WASHINGTON — Fearing that a new technology capable of pinpointing the exact location of cell phone users could leave them vulnerable to aggressive marketers or criminals, consumer groups are urging regulators to impose stricter privacy rules.
"There's a whole lot more value to information if I'm an advertiser or a bad guy, and I not only know what Web sites you are visiting but where you are as well," said Don Bromley, a security expert at Fiderus, a consulting firm based in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Today, the Federal Trade Commission will hear from Bromley, other experts from the telephone industry and consumer groups in a daylong conference about privacy issues in the wireless phone industry.
The FTC event comes one week after the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Assn. trade group asked the Federal Communications Commission to implement privacy rules governing the use of customer information.
By combining the Internet with wireless phones that track a user's whereabouts, cell phone companies and marketers will know not only who they are but also where they are within a few feet and perhaps what consumers are buying while they are in a store.
Companies such as Lucent Technologies have developed a technology that can track cell phone users to within 5 feet of their actual location. The system combines signals from global positioning satellites and complex algorithms from signals between handsets and cell transmission towers to target a caller's location.
Most 911 calls made on cell phones do not provide authorities with a user's location. So in 1996, the FCC required the phone industry to develop plans to install expensive technology to help police, fire and other safety officials find the locations of cell phone users.
With this nationwide system being implemented as soon as October 2001, many experts fear that consumers--already besieged by privacy abuses on the Internet--may become more vulnerable.
This location system will cost the phone industry between $2 billion and $4 billion. Phone carriers are required only to transmit this location information to public-safety agencies.
Given the hefty costs, some believe that phone carriers may allow third-party marketing companies to have access to this consumer data.
Last year, Congress passed a measure that greatly restricted telephone companies from sharing proprietary customer data with third parties.
