The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Monday said it filed a lawsuit against Kochava, a location data broker, for collecting and selling precise geolocation data gathered from consumers' mobile devices.

The complaint alleges that the U.S. company amasses a "wealth of information" about users by purchasing data from other data brokers to sell to its own clients.

"Kochava then sells customized data feeds to its clients to, among other purposes, assist in advertising and analyzing foot traffic at stores or other locations," the FTC said. "Among other categories, Kochava sells timestamped latitude and longitude coordinates showing the location of mobile devices."

The company advertises itself as a "real-time data solutions company" and the "largest independent data marketplace for connected devices." It also claims its Kochava Collective data marketplace provides "premium data feeds, audience targeting, and audience enrichment" through a privacy-first by design approach.

The location data is offered to its customers in the form of a feed that can be accessed through online data marketplaces for a $25,000 subscription. As recently as June 2022, it also made available a free sample dataset for a rolling seven-day period on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace with no restrictions placed on its usage.

While the marketplace currently lists no offerings, an Internet Archive snapshot saved on August 15, 2021, shows that Kochava had marketed three products at the time -

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