Corporate Misconduct Case Study: Kochava’s Data Brokerage & Its Impact on Personal Privacy
1. Introduction – When Your Phone Becomes a Corporate Informant
A single swipe at a doctor’s office, synagogue, or domestic‑violence shelter should be a private moment. Yet federal prosecutors say Kochava Inc.—through its wholly‑owned spin‑off Collective Data Solutions—turned those intimate footsteps into a revenue stream. Internal marketing boasts of “94 billion geo transactions per month,” pinpointing Americans to within a few meters and linking that breadcrumb trail to names, home addresses, emails, household income, ethnicity, and even children in the home. The complaint describes how a free, seven‑day “sample” alone exposed 61 million devices—enough to follow a woman from an abortion clinic back to her front door, track worshipers of every faith, and map the nightly routines of people seeking addiction treatment.
This is the raw edge of corporate greed under neoliberal capitalism: privatize the most sensitive corners of human life, package them as “premium data,” and sell monthly subscriptions that can run into the tens of thousands of dollars.
2. Inside the Allegations: Corporate Misconduct in High‑Definition
Data products Kochava sells
| Data Feed | Core Contents | Notable Sensitivities |
|---|---|---|
| Precision Location | Timestamped latitude‑longitude + Mobile Advertising ID (MAID) | Visits to reproductive‑health clinics, places of worship, addiction‑recovery centers |
| Database Graph | MAID linked to name, address, phone, email, gender, ethnicity, political affiliation, marital & parental status, income | Converts an “anonymous” device into a fully identifiable person |
| App Graph | App name, session length, in‑app spend, actions taken | LGBTQ+ dating apps, menstruation trackers, mental‑health tools |
| Audience Segments | Curated lists such as “Expecting Parents,” “Cancer,” or “Likely Republican Voter” | Enables one‑click targeting by medical condition, religion, or political belief |
The free sample alone held 327 million rows of location pings covering a single day.
Regulators charge that Kochava approved download requests for this trove in as little as 24 hours, asking only for a generic email address and a guess at “intended use.” From there, customers could:
- Trace exact nighttime dwellings to reveal home addresses (“household mapping”).
- Combine MAIDs with the Database Graph to unmask the person behind the phone.
- Build “political influence” segments by cross‑referencing rally attendance and installed apps.
All without the consumer’s knowledge—or any realistic way to opt out.
3. Regulatory Capture & Data‑Privacy Loopholes
The United States still lacks a comprehensive federal privacy statute. In that vacuum, data brokers flourish under a patchwork of notice‑and‑choice pop‑ups that rarely disclose the downstream sale of information. Kochava’s own sample consent screen dangles “cash‑back rewards” while omitting any mention of third‑party resale.
Decades of deregulation have also defanged Section 5 of the FTC Act, limiting penalties mostly to injunctive relief. Fines, when they come, often amount to a rounding error compared with subscription revenues. That imbalance incentivizes companies to treat enforcement as a cost of doing business, not a deterrent.
4. Profit‑Maximization at All Costs
- Low friction, high margin. Kochava’s subscriptions can top five digits per month, yet distribution is largely automated through cloud “marketplaces.”
- Monetizing intimacy. Pregnancy apps, prayer‑time reminders, and therapy logs become categorical flags—“Expecting Parents,” “Muslim,” “Anxiety.” The more sensitive the detail, the higher the ad premium.
- Persistence by design. Even if a user resets their MAID, the Database Graph links multiple identifiers back to a single consumer profile, nullifying privacy controls and ensuring life‑long tracking.
Under shareholder‑first logic, every GPS ping, heartbeat of screen time, or swipe in a niche community app is a commodity waiting to be extracted.
5. The Economic Fallout for Ordinary People
While Kochava rakes in licensing fees, households shoulder hidden costs:
- Higher insurance premiums when location or app data suggests a medical condition.
- Job or loan denials if an algorithm factors in political rallies or addiction‑recovery visits.
- Public‑sector burden as law enforcement, shelters, or clinics must harden security against doxxing and harassment fueled by brokered data.
These downstream expenses—diffuse, often invisible—magnify wealth disparity and shift the real price of surveillance capitalism onto communities.
6. Public‑Health & Safety Risks
Visits to oncology centers, fertility clinics, or methadone programs reveal not just medical status but also treatment timelines. The complaint recounts devices that lingered multiple evenings outside a shelter for at‑risk pregnant teens. When such data falls into hostile hands, patients face stalking, blackmail, or targeted misinformation (e.g., fraudulent “abortion‑reversal” ads). The chilling effect pushes vulnerable individuals away from essential care—an outcome that compromises public health in service of ad‑tech profits.
7. Exploitation of Workers (A Telling Silence)
The legal record focuses on consumer surveillance, not labor conditions. Yet its silence is itself revealing: when corporate value flows from mining datapoints rather than human labor, workers become peripheral, outsourced, or hidden behind algorithms. The same lax oversight that lets Kochava commercialize private life also leaves gig‑economy drivers, contract engineers, and call‑center staff exposed to low wages and minimal protections—while executives monetize behavioral gold.
8. Community Impact — Local Lives Undermined
| Sensitive location | Concrete example in the data | Real‑world risk to the people behind the ping |
|---|---|---|
| Women’s reproductive‑health clinics | A single mobile device was traced from a clinic entrance back to a single‑family home, its nightly routine appearing three times the same week | Harassment, doxxing, or state surveillance that chills access to legal medical care |
| Houses of worship | Devices were recorded inside Jewish, Christian, and Islamic congregations | Exposure of religious practice, discrimination, extremist targeting |
| Domestic‑violence & maternity shelters | One device spent the night at a shelter for pregnant teens and new mothers | Abusers tracking survivors, threats to minors and staff safety |
| Addiction‑recovery centers | Location pings revealed length of stay and repeat visits | Employment or insurance discrimination, black‑market targeting of recovering users |
These are not abstract datapoints—they represent neighbors whose safety hinges on discretion. When a broker can watch them move from refuge to residence, whole support networks become vulnerable.
9. The PR Machine — Corporate Spin Tactics
Kochava markets its trove as the “world’s largest independent mobile data marketplace,” boasting 94 billion geo‑transactions per month and 125 million monthly active users . In promotional graphics it promises a “360‑degree perspective” that stitches email, demographics, and household mapping into a single profile .
Yet when outsiders download the free seven‑day “sample,” the only gatekeeping is a web form that accepts “self” as a company name and “business” as a purpose—requests approved in as little as 24 hours . A tiny banner notes the file contains sensitive categories of information, but that warning functions like a fragile “wet paint” sign on a corporate vault: more legal décor than deterrent.
10. Wealth Disparity & Corporate Greed
A full location‑feed subscription lists for $25,000, while enterprise packages run tens of thousands of dollars per month . Those fees flow to Idaho headquarters and a Delaware shell, not to the communities whose data fuels the product. Meanwhile:
- Households shoulder higher premiums and credit denials when predictive models fold in health‑care or political visits.
- Public services divert scarce budgets to defend clinics, shelters, and houses of worship from data‑enabled threats.
The revenue‑to‑risk ratio skews upward—profits concentrate in corporate ledgers while the costs diffuse across neighborhoods already stretched thin.
11. Global Parallels — A Pattern of Predation
The complaint references a Catholic priest outed by location data sold through another broker, and anti‑abortion groups buying MAIDs to target patients with disinformation ads . Even Kochava’s CEO once criticized a rival’s COVID tracking demo for lacking anonymity—while selling comparable raw coordinates himself . The picture is industry‑wide: whenever regulation lags, data brokers iterate the same playbook—extract, segment, and monetize human habits faster than lawmakers can draft guardrails.
12. Corporate Accountability Fails the Public
The Federal Trade Commission must rely on Section 5’s broad “unfair practices” standard, which typically ends in injunctive relief rather than punitive damages. For a firm commanding five‑digit monthly contracts, a cease‑and‑desist order is a speed‑bump, not a reckoning. Executives keep their bonuses; the data pipelines keep flowing—only now with marginally longer terms‑of‑service text.
13. Pathways for Reform & Consumer Advocacy
- Comprehensive federal privacy law that bans sale of precise location without explicit, transaction‑specific consent.
- Automatic data‑deletion mandates after short retention windows, enforced by steep per‑record penalties.
- Private right of action granting individuals standing to sue brokers for misuse.
- Whistle‑blower incentives inside ad‑tech firms, mirroring financial‑sector reward structures.
- Digital sanctuaries—clinics, shelters, and religious sites should install location‑spoofing beacons or require device check‑ins to scramble surveillance.
14. Legal Minimalism — Doing Just Enough to Stay Plausibly Legal
Kochava labels its AWS sample as “marked sensitive,” but the label changes nothing about access. Opt‑in pop‑ups exchange “cash‑back rewards” for location rights, never revealing that data travels to a broker’s marketplace. The form of notice exists; the intent of informed consent evaporates, perfectly illustrating how late‑stage capitalism treats compliance as a branding exercise, not an ethical floor.
15. How Capitalism Exploits Delay — The Strategy of Time
From the moment regulators first flagged concerns, the company enjoyed months—if not years—of uninterrupted sales as litigation wound through motions and amended complaints. During that window the database expanded to over 300 million identified Americans with up to 300 data points each . In surveillance capitalism, every procedural pause is billable: the longer the courtroom clock ticks, the richer the trove grows and the harder it becomes to roll back what has already been captured.
16. The Language of Legitimacy – How Paper Shields Mask Concrete Harm
The Kochava marketplace wraps surveillance in a polite vocabulary of compliance. The AWS download page warns that the free file has been “marked … as containing sensitive categories of information,” then invites any visitor to “submit” a subscription by typing a company name—“self” is acceptable—and a one‑line “intended use case” . No background check, no contract addendum, and no mention that the data can trace a pregnant teenager from shelter to home.
The same rhetorical softening appears in the FTC complaint: practices that expose reproductive choices, prayer habits, or addiction recovery are framed as “unfair acts” likely to cause “substantial injury” . Legalistic phrases—“reasonable under the circumstances,” “subscription terms,” “substantial injury not outweighed by countervailing benefits”—translate lived danger into technocratic ledger lines. Under neoliberal capitalism, this vocabulary reduces moral outrage to a debate over statutory thresholds while the data stream keeps flowing.
17. Monetizing Harm – Turning Vulnerability into Line‑Item Revenue
Kochava prices individual dignity like any other commodity. A single‑day sample exposes 61 million devices for free; the full precision‑location feed lists at $25,000 and up, while enterprise contracts run tens of thousands per month . Audience segments link those coordinates to intimate life events and sell at industrial scale:
| Segment (Example) | Advertised Devices | Sensitive Hook Used to Drive Ad Spend |
|---|---|---|
| Expecting Parents | 11.4 million | Menstruation & pregnancy‑tracking apps |
| Medical Health (pre‑packaged) | 10 million | Visits to hospitals and treatment sites |
| New Parents / Lamaze Attendees | Not stated | Birth‑class check‑ins |
| Likely Republican Voter | Not stated | Rally attendance & political app installs |
Every category invites advertisers—and ideologues—to pay a premium for precision reach. The financial upside accumulates in Boise and Delaware corporate accounts, while the downside shows up as higher insurance quotes, predatory ads, or physical stalking for the people inside the dataset.
18. Profiting from Complexity – Subsidiaries, Shells, and Cloud “Convenience”
When public scrutiny tightened, Kochava spun off Collective Data Solutions (CDS), which now offers the same precision location, Database Graph, App Graph, and audience segments under a new banner . The maneuver diffuses liability: regulators chase multiple entities while customers still enjoy a “360° Perspective” on 100 million U.S. households.
Distribution is equally opaque. An AWS “Extended Provider Program” badge cloaks raw latitude/longitude files in enterprise respectability, and the database itself pulls from layers of third‑party brokers and SDK vendors . In late‑stage capitalism, opacity is not a bug—it is the revenue model.
19. This Is the System Working as Intended
Nothing here is a rogue glitch. A deregulated data economy rewards any firm that can convert everyday behavior into tradeable signals. Weak federal privacy law, minimal gatekeeping, and fines small enough to expense as marketing ensure a predictable outcome: the fastest extractors win. The Kochava case is not an aberration; it is the logical result of incentive structures that prize shareholder value over human safety.
20. Conclusion – The Human Cost Behind the Dataset
Behind every “device_id_value” lies a person navigating health crises, faith, relationships, and survival. Kochava’s business turns those private journeys into a real‑time map for bidders with cash. While executives promote a frictionless “data marketplace,” communities absorb the friction of stalking, discrimination, and economic exclusion. Until law catches up—and enforces penalties that truly outweigh profits—precise location will remain the raw material of corporate greed, feeding ever‑richer profiles and ever‑deeper inequality.
21. Frivolous or Serious Lawsuit?
The complaint documents live data that pinpoints abortion patients, reveals prayer routines, and logs shelter stays—all traded with almost no gatekeeping. It cites subscription prices, device counts, and explicit marketing slides that brag about one‑to‑one household mapping. The harm is concrete, ongoing, and impossible for consumers to avoid. By any rational measure, this lawsuit is not only serious; it is a crucial test of whether privacy law can still protect Americans from a surveillance market designed to treat personal life as limitless inventory.
FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak released a concurring statement about this travesty: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/2024-7-15-Commissioner-Holyoak-Statement-re-Kochava-final.pdf
💡 Explore Corporate Misconduct by Category
Corporations harm people every day — from wage theft to pollution. Learn more by exploring key areas of injustice.
- 💀 Product Safety Violations — When companies risk lives for profit.
- 🌿 Environmental Violations — Pollution, ecological collapse, and unchecked greed.
- 💼 Labor Exploitation — Wage theft, worker abuse, and unsafe conditions.
- 🛡️ Data Breaches & Privacy Abuses — Misuse and mishandling of personal information.
- 💵 Financial Fraud & Corruption — Lies, scams, and executive impunity.
💡 Explore Corporate Misconduct by Category
Corporations harm people every day — from wage theft to pollution. Learn more by exploring key areas of injustice.
- 💀 Product Safety Violations — When companies risk lives for profit.
- 🌿 Environmental Violations — Pollution, ecological collapse, and unchecked greed.
- 💼 Labor Exploitation — Wage theft, worker abuse, and unsafe conditions.
- 🛡️ Data Breaches & Privacy Abuses — Misuse and mishandling of personal information.
- 💵 Financial Fraud & Corruption — Lies, scams, and executive impunity.