When Corporate Fines Are Just the Cost of Doing Business
The news that T-Mobile has been hit with a $92 million fine for selling customer location data without consent should be cause for celebration. After all, it’s a rare moment when big tech companies face any real consequences for their privacy violations. But when you dig into the numbers, the victory feels pretty hollow.
Here’s the thing that’s got me particularly frustrated: T-Mobile reported $11.3 billion in net income for 2024. That $92 million fine? It represents less than one percent of their profits. To put this in perspective, if you earned $100,000 last year, this would be equivalent to a fine of about $800. Annoying? Sure. Life-changing? Hardly.
The whole situation reminds me of those old parking meter strategies back when I worked in the city. Some people would just factor in the occasional parking ticket as part of their daily transport budget because it was cheaper than paying for proper parking. That’s essentially what we’re seeing here with corporate privacy violations – they’re just another line item in the business plan.
What really gets under my skin is how cavalier these companies are about our personal data. Someone in the discussion mentioned that T-Mobile was essentially selling people’s data “for no type of money,” and they’re right to be concerned. When corporations value our privacy so little that they’ll trade it away for what amounts to pocket change, we’ve got a serious problem.
The location data wasn’t just being sold to random marketing companies either – it was going to services that police were using to track people. Think about that for a moment. Your phone carrier was essentially turning you into a walking surveillance device without your knowledge or consent, and when they got caught, the financial penalty was so small it barely registered on their quarterly reports.
This is where I reckon we need to completely rethink how we approach corporate accountability. Several people suggested that fines should be three times the revenue (not just profit) generated from illegal activities, and honestly, that sounds about right to me. Better yet, make it a percentage of total company revenue that actually hurts. When a fine is less than what a company spends on executive bonuses, it’s not really a deterrent – it’s just a business expense.
The cynical part of me knows that we’ll probably see a class action lawsuit eventually, where affected customers might receive a settlement check for about 70 cents while the lawyers pocket millions. Meanwhile, T-Mobile will probably pass the cost of the fine onto customers through subtle price increases, because why wouldn’t they?
But here’s what gives me hope: people are starting to pay attention to these issues. The fact that this story has generated so much discussion shows that privacy isn’t just a concern for tech nerds anymore – it’s becoming a mainstream political issue. We’re seeing more regulatory action, both here in Australia with our Privacy Act reforms and internationally.
The solution isn’t just bigger fines, though they’d certainly help. We need proper enforcement mechanisms that make privacy violations genuinely painful for corporate balance sheets. We need transparency requirements so we know exactly how our data is being used. And we need politicians who are willing to stand up to the telecommunications lobby and put consumer rights first.
Until we see some real consequences – the kind that actually change corporate behaviour rather than just generating headlines – companies like T-Mobile will continue to treat our privacy as just another commodity to be bought and sold. The only question is whether we’ll let them get away with it.