When Roe v. Wade was overturned and people started talking about all the ways digital data could be used to track people seeking abortion care, I was honestly not concerned. Trigger laws that impacted people’s lives immediately were going into effect, and I figured something as amorphous as data collection was the least of our problems. But recent news that digital data is, in fact, being used to track and prosecute abortion seekers proved me terrifyingly wrong. Now the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing a data collection company to try to stop them from selling sensitive user data that could be used to target people seeking abortions, CNN reported.
The company, Kochava, is an Idaho-based company that sells the geolocation data it collects from hundreds of millions of mobile devices, BuzzFeed News reported. The FTC is suing the company because it says the data Kochava collects can be used to track both abortion seekers and abortion providers. “Where consumers seek out health care, receive counseling, or celebrate their faith is private information that shouldn’t be sold to the highest bidder,” Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement released Monday. “The FTC is taking Kochava to court to protect people’s privacy and halt the sale of their sensitive geolocation information.”
