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Verizon Wireless Changes Privacy Policy
First time accepted submitter flash2011 writes "Recently Verizon changed its home internet TOS to by default share your location with advertisers. Now Verizon Wireless has also changed its privacy policy to by default share your web browsing history, cell phone location and app usage as well. Whilst there have been a few stories on these changes, internet forums have largely been quiet. Where is the outrage? Or have we just come to accept that ISPs are going to sell our personal information and web browsing habits?"
Is a firewall particularly useful in this instance. All of the information that they are providing to third parties comes between your phone and Verizon's first gateway. They don't need to install an app. They can just watch the information as it flows through their pipes.
vzw.com/myprivacy
Just login and click a few buttons. It was actually really quick and painless for me.
-Ted http://www.freemathhelp.com/
The reason it's valuable to advertisers is that it improves what's called "conversion rates." On a typical ad buy of say 100,000 impressions, you might get 1-100 people actually buying the product after seeing the ad. That percentage is called the "conversion rate", and it's tracked thoroughly. There are also two types of ad campaigns: acquisition and awareness. When most people think about advertising, they think about acquisition -- the ads meant to get people to actually buy the product not long after seeing the ad.
Awareness is harder to track, but it also benefits from targets ad buys (and is also tracked to the fullest extent that they can). If I want people to remember my sports store the next time they need new cleats or sports clothes, it helps if my ad is shown to people who like football.
Whether this is good or bad is up to you, but I'm just trying to explain the motivations behind targeting.
PocketPermissions Android Permission Guide
I just received an e-mail about this a few days ago. Here is the link you can use to opt out of this:
www.vzw.com/myprivacy
Login with your account info, and you can then opt out all of the phone lines on your account. Be sure to get all three separate options on that page.