Bounty hunters and other sketchy figures have been buying people’s location data, according to a report published today by Motherboard.

The report said data from companies such as AT&T Inc. and Sprint Corp. and T-Mobile US Inc. are ending up in the wrong hands, and all for a small price.

During the investigation the journalist gave $300 to a bounty hunter along with a phone number, and that bounty hunter sent the number to his contact. The result: The bounty hunter soon came back with the approximate location of the phone. As carrier cellphone towers communicate with your phone, you are never far away from an estimated location.

According to Motherboard, this is because some of the main carriers in the U.S. are still selling data to third-party location tracking companies, and those companies sell it again, after which it can end up in the hands of bounty hunters. This is in spite of reports in 2018 that said major U.S. carriers had promised to no longer sell data to third-party brokers.

MicroBilt, for one, has been selling this data to a vast array of buyers, ranging from bounty hunters to bail bondsmen to landlords and even car salesmen. As the report also discovered, this sensitive data can also end up in the hands of anyone willing to pay a few hundred bucks. That might include a stalker or a hardened criminal.

Last June, Senator Ron Wyden lambasted carriers for “abusive and potentially unlawful practices.” The main carriers said they were in the process of ending all contracts with data aggregators.

Verizon Communications Inc. seemed to lead that charge, but other carriers were slow to react. “AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint seem content to continuing to sell their customers’ private information to these shady middlemen, Americans’ privacy be damned,” said Wyden. Later T-Mobile denied it sold data to middlemen, while the other two companies said they were working on ending those contracts.

After the Motherboard investigation, AT&T said location data is only given to law enforcement or when a customer gives permission. “Over the past few months, as we committed to do, we have been shutting down everything else,” the company said in a statement. “We have shut down access for MicroBilt as we investigate these allegations.”

In the meantime, it seems location data of millions of Americans could potentially end up in the street.

Photo: Balint Földesi/Flickr