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Verizon Wireless Changes Privacy Policy

Posted by samzenpus on from the changing-the-rules dept.

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?"

6 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Eating your own dog food. by DigiShaman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm already reading about how more and more companies are exposing our privacy in order to make an extra buck. But what I want to know is this. How does the top executive staff feel about them and their own family members having to eat their own dog food. Or...do they???

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
    1. Re:Eating your own dog food. by siddesu · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You surely remember the brouhaha that ensued a few years ago when one of those semi-serious online news outfits -- El Reg or The Inq I think -- assembled assembed and published a profile about one of the Google founders that included things like home address, money he made last year, etc. The guy was absolutely pissed and bitched about it for a long time, cut the outfit's access to press events and what not. I also recall Mark Suckerberg also having a fit about his private photos or whatever that someone leaked off his page -- that was maybe a year or so ago.

      So it seems that managers are reacting pretty much like everyone else -- when something is making them money, they think it is good, and when the same thing affects them badly, they do the mental reconciliation arithmetic and jump at the messenger instead of the problem.

  2. New anti-privacy trends? by ErichTheRed · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is it just me, or are most of the technological innovations in the last decade mainly about monetizing consumer behavior tracking?

    Google has an entire ecosystem built up around you using their "free" services in exchange for mining your data to improve search results and advertising clickthroughs. Facebook takes it another step and explicitly states that all your personal data is for sale to advertisers. Amazon has all sorts of creepy analytics sorting through your purchase and shopping history, and now they will have full access to Kindle Fire users' web browsing habits. If the late 90s through early 2000s was the dotcom bubble, the late 2000s through the early 2010s appears to be the customer marketing data bubble. Who knows what will come of this...

    What I don't get is why this data is so useful to advertisers. I've almost never bought anything based solely on an ad. Maybe other people are more easily manipulated, but generally I need to try something first or have a real (non-marketroid) person give me a recommendation before I give money away to someone. I'm one of those annoying skeptics in the IT department who take vendor-sponsored "whitepapers" on products with a grain of salt. I guess advertising works on some subset of the population....otherwise businesses wouldn't waste money on it.

    We'll see what happens with the privacy thing as well. Either the Web 2.0 crowd is going to completely take over and there will be zero privacy in any aspect of one's life, or people might start realizing that Google and Facebook don't just put these cool services out there for free. I'm not a tinfoil hat guy, but I really don't want the kind of hyper-targeted advertising that knowing my location, presumably my credit score and browsing history would present. Problem is that for every one of me, there 10 million others who don't care or just click I Agree to the new terms because they want the cool service.

    1. Re:New anti-privacy trends? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Other problem(for you) is that, unless you go off the grid entirely, you tend to stick out like a sore thumb among the happy-clicking opt-in consumers...

      If you play with a tool like panopticlick you can observe that browsers are surprisingly identifiable by default and, worse, a lot of the tools used to make them less so are quite uncommonly used, which actually makes you stand further out of the crowd.

      It isn't clear whether there is money in tracking and attempting to sell to, the vehement refuseniks of the world; but only the sharpest and most dedicated would escape if there were...

  3. You are not immune by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Maybe other people are more easily manipulated, but generally I need to try something first or have a real (non-marketroid) person give me a recommendation before I give money away to someone.

    I think it is incredibly naive to believe that you are immune to advertising. Most people think they are immune to advertisements but research shows that advertising affects how all of us make decisions.

    When you go to the store to buy peanut butter do you care if you pick up Jiff or Peter Pan? I can assure you the J.M. Smucker company and ConAgraFoods care a great deal. They carefully design the packaging, pay for competitive shelf space, and run advertisements that have been shown to subtly influence which jar you grab as you walk through the grocery store.

    Even with more significant purchases where you "have a real (non-marketroid) person give me a recommendation before I give money away", I think you will find advertising has influenced which products you even consider looking at. Most likely whatever led you to look at that product will subtly bias your impression of reviews and which factors you look at.

    Furthermore, those 'non-marketroid' persons may well be advertisers themselves. Magazines like to review products. The magazines know that if they produce a poor review, the vender will stop buying ads in that magazine. Perhaps that is why many reviews look like paid advertisements.

    Not all advertisements take the form of a banner ad or newspaper insert. Some advertisements are articles in trade magazines that are nearly verbatim quotes from a press release. Have you ever heard a politician running his mouth in front of the press? That is because he wants to get his issue and himself in the headlines (advertise). Ever notice that radio stations tend to have a 40-song playlist that they run over-and-over again? Those songs are advertisements placed by the record labels. Ever heard of product placement in movies? Those products are donated by vendors to increase brand awareness.

    Businesses spend billions advertising their products because those advertisements influence which products people buy. You sir, make decisions based on advertisements whether you realize it or not.

  4. Re:Use a firewall by narcc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    RIM can't give out keys for BES users because they don't have them

    If you're on BES, you're secure. Neither RIM nor any government can access your data.

    --
    Required reading for internet skeptics