WASHINGTON— The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has ordered Mobilewalla to stop collecting data from the online advertising “Real-Time Bidding” (RTB) system. RTB operates the majority of advertising on the Internet. Mobilewalla claims to have 5 years of data from 1.9 billion people’s devices, and creates dossiers about American’s most intimate characteristics.

In November 2022, Open Markets flagged the dangers of Mobilewalla to the FTC in a submission together with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue, a forum of 75 NGOs.

“This FTC action against Mobilewalla is an important step in shutting down the free-for-all of sensitive data that exposes America to national security vulnerability and exposes every American to the discrimination, manipulation, and private and government surveillance. We commend the FTC for acting,” said Dr Johnny Ryan, a senior fellow at Open Markets and Director of ICCL Enforce.

The online advertising “Real-Time Bidding” (RTB) system broadcasts Americans’ GPS coordinates and what they are doing online 107 trillion times a year. RTB is the dominant technology of online advertising, and triggers almost every time a person loads a webpage or uses an app. 

• This exposes people to significant risk with examples like predatory profiling of a suicidal gambling addict, county sheriffs buying live feeds of people’s locations, and data on victims of sexual abuse being made available to buy. 

• Every year criminals exploit tracking-based advertising systems to steal billions of dollars from businesses who unknowingly pay to show ads to bots. 

• Surveillance advertising also poses significant national security risks: Google and other RTB companies broadcast the locations of Americans to entities across the globe, putting sensitive personnel and their institutions at risk of blackmail and hacking.

The FTC's explainer on RTB cites Dr. Ryan's earlier RTB work.

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