According to a lawsuit against the agency, an adtech company is accused of revealing people's visits to sensitive locations, including women's reproductive health clinics.
Kochava is accused of violating laws that prohibit unfair or deceptive practices by allowing its customers to license data collected from mobile devices that can identify people.
The agency believes that the data can be used to trace people to other places. The company's coordinates can be used to identify a person when they visit a location.
Kochava said in the lawsuit that the agency wrongly alleges that it is in violation of consumer protection laws. The FTC wouldn't say anything.
The agency might assert itself as a defender of health-related data in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the contraceptives law. Democrats, privacy advocates and technologists warn that people's digital trails could become evidence in abortion prosecutions and after cases where details like search history and Facebook messages about the procedure have been used as evidence against women.
There are some steps that Democrats in Washington can take to protect reproductive health data. The Federal Trade Commission was urged by the Biden White House to take steps to protect people's privacy when they seek reproductive health services.
Despite being more than 100 years old, the agency has been unable to gain the resources needed to police emerging privacy threats. In the past, the FTC has moved slowly in bringing cases against companies. Kochava has already made changes to its privacy practices around sensitive health data. Kochava said the FTC sent it a complaint around July and August after the Supreme Court decision.
Kochava wrote in its suit that the FTC's allegations show a lack of understanding of its services. The company will create a privacy block service that will remove health location data from its marketplace.
Cox said that the FTC was trying to get the company to agree to a settlement in order to set precedent in the adtech industry.
The Supreme Court's decision in Jackson Women's Health, which left states free to outlaw abortion, unleashed a wave of privacy concerns that adtech companies or databrokers, which collect and sell personal data, could be used to detectwhether a person visited an abortion provider.
Fears are not completely hypothetical. The Massachusetts attorney general reached a settlement with an advertising company hired to direct targeted advertisements using a technique known as "geofencing" to target "abortion minded women" while they were in waiting rooms. People were taken to a website with information about alternatives after being shown ads with texts.
The FTC could try to protect reproductive data through crafting new privacy regulations. The agency last week said it was looking at creating new rules. Concerns about health tech and location data were listed in the agency's request for the public to weigh in.
Sam Levine, director of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection, said at a news conference that consumer privacy is not just an abstract issue.
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