• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, May 2, 2024

Mobile data broker Kochava may be open to settling privacy charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission, according to court papers filed this week.

In a joint motion filed Tuesday, Kochava and the FTC asked U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill for a five-week extension of a deadline to file certain pre-trial paperwork, writing that the extra time “would facilitate settlement talks.”

U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Idaho granted the request on Wednesday, extending the deadline from May 6 to June 14.

A Kochava spokesperson called the move a “procedural development,” adding that the company “has always welcomed productive conversations with the FTC and ways that we can work collaboratively to protect user data.”

The FTC declined to comment.

The FTC claimed in a 2022 complaint against Kochava that the company engaged in an unfair business practice by allegedly selling the kind of precise geolocation data that could expose sensitive information, such as whether people visited doctors' offices or religious institutions.

Among other allegations, the FTC said Kochava sells precise geolocation data as well as mobile advertising IDs -- unique, 32-character identifiers that persist, unless consumers proactively reset them.

Kochava countered in a motion seeking dismissal that the data it sells isn't “personally identifiable,” and that the agency's allegations -- even if proven true -- wouldn't amount to “unfair” conduct.

In February, Winmill rejected Kochava's argument and allowed the FTC to proceed with the complaint. Winmill essentially said at the time that the allegations against the company, if proven true, could support the claim that it engaged in an unfair business practice -- meaning it engaged in activity that could cause “substantial injury” to consumers, and isn't reasonably avoidable by consumers or outweighed by benefits.

“Kochava allegedly provides its customers with vast amounts of essentially non-anonymized information about millions of mobile device users’ past physical locations, personal characteristics (including age, ethnicity, and gender), religious and political affiliations, marital and parental statuses, economic statuses, and more,” Winmill wrote in February.

Kochava founder and CEO Charles Manning said at the time that the company was “confident” it would prevail on the merits.

“Kochava has always operated consistently and proactively in compliance with all rules and laws, including those specific to privacy,” he stated. 

“Never in a million years did we imagine that as a small, law-abiding company we’d find ourselves in the ring on behalf of an entire industry,” Manning added.

Shortly before the FTC sued, Kochava announced a “privacy block” feature that removes known health services locations from its marketplace. Manning said in February that the feature “has been blocking over 2.1 million locations from its data products on an ongoing basis.”