Google and Apple may face another FTC probe over 'harmful' mobile trackers

• Lawmakers have called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google and Apple's mobile tracking practices.
• Google and Apple have been accused of enabling tracking IDs by default in their respective operating systems.
• The tech giants' mobile trackers are viewed as a way for private actors to hunt down women seeking abortion using their location data.

Lawmakers called on the FTC to look into the practices of Apple and Google after they were concerned that the data could be used to track down women who seek abortions.

Four Democratic lawmakers have accused the tech giants of paving the way for the collection and sale of user data. Lawmakers stated in a letter to the FTC that the existence of ad-specific identifiers in the two mobile operating systems made this possible.

A group of senators wrote a letter accusing Apple and Google of facilitating harmful practices by building advertising-specific tracking IDs into their operating systems.

Both companies have adopted new measures to limit the collection of user data, but lawmakers argue that these new measures still make it easier to trace individual phone owners.

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Last year, Apple introduced a new privacy measure, requiring app developers to get permission before collecting a unique Identifier on every device. The advertising ID was rolled out late last year in order to limit tracking.

The letter stated that until recently, Apple enabled this tracking ID by default and required consumers to turn it off.

The two tech giants did not reply to the request for comment.

According to the lawmakers, the rise of the "unregulated data broker market" is due to the fact that it is possible to easily identify a particular consumer in a dataset ofanonymous location records.

Lawmakers fear that the data broker market and state bounty laws could encourage private actors to hunt down women who seek abortions.