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?"

Comments

Use a firewall

[ZP-Blight]

That's what I do on my android phone.
I have DroidWall installed and I simply block unwanted "services" from internet access.
There's other alternatives on android, such-as "freezing" services.

Re:Use a firewall

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Use a firewall

[gimmebeer]

A firewall won't prevent your ISP from telling advertisers that you like to google Nike shoes and them then targeting you with advertisements... that is information upstream of your local connection. At best, you could use it to try to block ads from certains domains from loading. SSL or a VPN is a better alternative, but it's not always available. At the end of the day, it's just your ISP selling you to advertisers to make even more money at your expense. The outrage is present, there are simply fewer real alternatives these days.

Re:Use a firewall

[niftydude]

That doesn't work - they are basically using their routers to snoop on the traffic as you browse. The only way to prevent that is to use a vpn to some proxy somewhere, but then whoever supplies internet to that proxy can snoop on that traffic...

Re:Use a firewall

[ScrewMaster]

A firewall won't prevent your ISP from telling advertisers that you like to google Nike shoes and them then targeting you with advertisements...

Well, an outgoing firewall can help prevent malware (which ISPs love to install on your equipment) from getting out. But there's an easier way, if you're concerned about your browser habits being tracked by your ISP. For example, you like to use Google for your search, just type this into your Location bar:

https://www.google.com

End-to-end encryption keeps them from knowing squat about your browsing habits other than the fact that you prefer Google. Of course, Google knows all.

Re:Use a firewall

[Anonymous Coward]

While https everywhere will prevent them from knowing you Google Nikes, it won't prevent them from knowing you hit Google.com, and then hit Nike.com. That information is still quite valuable.

Re:Use a firewall

[Gutboy]

Maybe because they give away the encryption keys http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-31/rim-s-agreement-with-india-is-likely-to-foreshadow-wider-government-access.html

Re:Use a firewall

[narcc]

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.

Eating your own dog food.

[DigiShaman]

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???

Re:Eating your own dog food.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

The top executive staff, for the most part, is not us. They do not think like us, because if they did they would be unlikely to make it to a corporate executive or board of directors position. They do not act like us. Some of them may be very good people, and all of them are likely both driven and very fortunate, but it is a mistake to think that they think like us, or that their fears are the same as ours. Some of them are the same--but only some.

The personality type of a driven businessperson tends to be different than that of a driven (or non-driven) engineer.

Not always. But based on anecdotal evidence, I believe it to be true.

Re:Eating your own dog food.

[DigiShaman]

Given that people in power tend to have more psychopathic traits than the average person, your point is well taken.

Re:Eating your own dog food.

[jimpop]

People in power also tend to get more exceptions than the rest of us. I would bet $100 that, if the CEO of VZ has an Android phone, the Facebook app on his/her phone doesn't have a VZ forced-installed, bloatware, always-running Android Service called FacebookUploader.

Re:Eating your own dog food.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that many of them have a general level of inherent-displeasure-at-privacy-loss much closer to that of Joe Sixpack than to your Slashdot EFF member.

More specifically, though, I think that it is very important to note that, in a great many cases, it isn't the dogfood itself that freaks people out; but the plausible and likely sequelae of the dogfood. A lot of these sequelae are economic, which means that their severity just evaporates as you move up the food chain.

Consider: every time some article comes up on Slashdot about using personalized genome sequencing to predict disease, the following happens:
1. TFA: The Biocorp Sequencotron 5000 can sequence your sequences in only 20 minutes!
2. "Y'know, it actually would be pretty useful to know what I'm predisposed to, and adjust certain medical testing and lifestylefactors accordingly"
3. "And by "adjust", you mean have at least one pre-existing-condition identified and never have health insurance again?

A lot of "slippery slope/plausible near future/etc." "drawbacks" to these technologies just don't apply to the people driving them. Not because the technologies themselves don't; but because the drawbacks only bite under social conditions to which they aren't subject.

Who's going to be on the pointy end of "Verizon WorkForce Information System", which offers to provide location data on where company issued drone-phones are? The board? Not likely. The cube chattel? You betcha.

Re:Eating your own dog food.

[siddesu]

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.

Re:Opt out

[dukeblue219]

vzw.com/myprivacy

Just login and click a few buttons. It was actually really quick and painless for me.

Verizon just gave you a free cancel option

[Animats]

If you're locked into a Verizon contract, Verizon just gave you the option to cancel without paying a penalty. They've made a material change in the terms, and you now have the right to exit the contract.

Re:Is it even really worth fighting anymore?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Well with the browsing history we now know when you see my manager's phone and there's advertisements for pig porn. I mean we always *knew*, but now there's proof, if he has a Verizon phone at least.

New anti-privacy trends?

[ErichTheRed]

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.

Re:New anti-privacy trends?

[syousef]

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

It's not just you, but I think you're putting it too nicely. Monetize is the wrong word (and I hate it because it's an unnecessary made up marketing word to boot). The correct word is exploit. Companies have become very customer hostile, while continuing to play up marketing that tells you how fantastic they are and how wonderful your life will be if you use their services. So there's also issues of hypocrisy and false advertising. These issues have always existed of course, but the abuse has gotten way out of hand. When is the last time you heard of a company being punished for false or misleading advertising? The worst part? Some customers defend such bad behaviour if it's their favourite company or if they think they aren't personally affected.

Re:New anti-privacy trends?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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...

Re:New anti-privacy trends?

[alostpacket]

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.

Re:New anti-privacy trends?

[bennettp]

The correct word is exploit. Companies have become very customer hostile, while continuing to play up marketing that tells you how fantastic they are and how wonderful your life will be if you use their services.

"Customer hostile" is not correct either. It implies that users are also customers, which we are not.

So who are the customers? The customers are the advertisers who buy aggregate customer data, or advertising space. The customers are the people who actually pay for the service.

The users are the product.

Re:New anti-privacy trends?

[Solandri]

Monetize is the wrong word (and I hate it because it's an unnecessary made up marketing word to boot). The correct word is exploit. Companies have become very customer hostile, while continuing to play up marketing that tells you how fantastic they are and how wonderful your life will be if you use their services. So there's also issues of hypocrisy and false advertising.

No, from an advertising standpoint, this is customer-friendly. Assuming you're going to be showered by ads anyway in today's media, do you want to be showered by ads 90% of which don't interest you? Or do you want ads which interest you 75% of the time? I buy a lot of computers for client businesses. I want to be informed when Dell or some other major manufacturer holds a sale. Being able to better target ads is customer-friendly - it's win/win. It's not hypocritical, nor is it false advertising (indeed, showering you with ads saying all these products will make your life better, when 90% of them don't even interest you is more false).

Where this is customer-hostile is on the issue of privacy; nothing to do with the advertising. If I want to be informed of certain types of ads, I should have to give my consent to be tracked that way. Making it the default is making violating my privacy the default.

Re:New anti-privacy trends?

[Shoe Puppet]

Assuming you're going to be showered by ads anyway in today's media, do you want to be showered by ads 90% of which don't interest you? Or do you want ads which interest you 75% of the time?

I want ads that interest me 0% of the time. That way they can't influence me.

Re:New anti-privacy trends?

[ChilyWily]

True - I hope I don't sound too paranoid, but I have often wondered if there are other forces in play who would be okay to have this collected for "marketing" purposes, until they need it for something else.

Tracking of credit transactions, web sites visited, shopping histories etc., they all represent a treasure trove for someone wanting to surreptitiously look at a person without having to go through the (already watered down) legal burden of proof.

My concern is that there is no parity here for the person whose information is being shared in secret. Can I even know who is see-ing or asking for my information? And can I stop particular people from getting it?

Re:Is it even really worth fighting anymore?

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Sure. If they had competitors. They hardly do. It is not a highly competitive market.

A Violation of the Cable and Telecommunication Act

[zbobet2012]

What precisely they are allowed to do is tightly regulated by the Cable and Telecommunications act, specifically the sections governing "Personally Identifiable Information". A brief summer of the act can be found here. Note the following section:

Cable operators generally are prohibited from using their cable systems to collect personally identifiable information concerning any subscriber without the prior written or electronic consent of the subscriber. ... Notice to the subscriber must be in the form of a separate, written statement and must be clear and conspicuous. Notice must also be given at least once every year that the agreed upon service is provided. "Personally identifiable information" does not include any record of aggregate data which does not identify particular persons.

Whether this constitues usage of PII is dubious at best. Indeed you may see other major telcos step in and sue seeing as incorrect usage of this data gives Verizon an unfair market advantage.

Regulate away

[FyberOptic]

This kind of stuff is ridiculous when you're already paying a lot of money for service. But lots of companies are taking advantage of digital consumers in lots of ways already. ISPs, like Charter for example, default to giving you a search page when DNS requests fail. This page is not only full of sponsored ads, but it breaks how the internet is supposed to work when a domain doesn't exist. Fortunately, Charter finally implemented a way to fully opt out (after a long time of a useless method), but the default is still the search page which most people will never change. And we all know the stories of ISPs replacing ads in pages with your own, or inserting new ads altogether, or creating profiles of sites you visit and selling it to advertisers. Who cares about the user when there's money to be made.

We need privacy laws to stop it, because if you're counting on the free market/capitalism/blah blah to "work things out on its own" (as I've been told by people before when discussing privacy issues), then you're incredibly naive. Greed runs these companies' decisions, and when nearly every company is doing it, or there's no other company in your area to service you, then you're stuck. Time for more of those government regulations that people love to hate.

Re:Regulate away

[FyberOptic]

That's the problem. How exactly are customers going to push these companies into doing anything, when customers rely on these services and can't just cut them off? And there's far fewer people who actually care about these things than there are people who will haplessly continue to pay anyway, so even if all of us who care canceled service, it wouldn't make much difference to them. They'd just find new ways to screw the people who are left to make up the difference.

And I won't pay an extra fee for my privacy, because I'm already paying them a fee for the service. This isn't Facebook, where they need that revenue to run the service itself. What right do they have to extort people into paying for their privacy, knowing the customer probably has no other option than to use them? That's ridiculous. Especially when you factor in early termination fees, which a simple privacy policy change wouldn't be a valid excuse to break the contract since there's no actual fee change.

Cellphones and data networks are services the average public needs in this modern age, and they should be regulated the same way the phone companies used to be to prevent people from being taken advantage of. Because history shows, when a company feels it's in the solidified position in a market to do so, they're going to do it. Your only option in that situation is to go along with it, or to live in the stone age in protest.

Re:There is no such thing as God.

[FatdogHaiku]

Vote for Saint Vidicon of Cathode, he is a main component of the resistance!

Re:Well I for one

[rtb61]

That is a failed idea. Thin edge of the wedge. You think they wont shift this idea of recording and selling all your browser habits from you fixed connection. You think they wont start intercepting all your emails, analysing the content for psychological marketing manipulation and farming those email addresses, you think they wont intercept your content and add there own. You think they wont start intercepting VOIP and, all the calls you make.

How about as a business, all your contacts are now going to be farmed, all your business knowledge sold off to competitors. Hell, why stop their. The most profitable business tactic would be to intercept all, 'ALL', email tenders, and route that data to ISP preferred contractors.

So the idea is to fight it at the beginning. Absolutely any and every challenge of personal and business privacy should be challenged and challenged hard right at the beginning. Any company that refuses should be shattered, broken up, it's parts sold off to competitors and the corporate executives should enjoy a federal holiday at government expense for quite a few years.

This is extraordinary dangerous interception of private traffic and a real crack down is required.

You are not immune

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Don't worry, the sky isn't going anywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. And then opt-out on Amazon's site. And then on Google's. And then one that one site you visited once and forgot about. And the other hundred million sites you visit every day. Sorry, but opt-out is a cop out. It's to force people to do something they don't want to (or more likely that you haven't even revealed to them) and put the blame on them for not "being smarter" about it. It's bullshit.

Outrage is prohibited

[jamesh]

Where is the outrage?

If you you read the fine print (you may need a microscope) you'll probably find that outrage is prohibited by the ToS.

Opt-out Link

[Orphaze]

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.

Ob

[Hognoxious]

Pray they do not change it further.

Re:Is it even really worth fighting anymore?

[Culture20]

You work for Kermit the Frog?

Re:Is it even really worth fighting anymore?

[mabhatter654]

More importantly, the published that you visited your health insurance provider and perscription provider...

Better yet, you start getting ads because your daughter was looking up stuff about preventing pregnancy.

This is a whole world of hurt. More than that, it is probably a back door to allow the government to analyze the data without warrants... As well as any other company like debt collectors, insurance, moral police, etc...

Re:Why no outrage?

[maxwell demon]

Simple, the average customer does not read the ToS, nor do they care when they change. This will only change once ToS documents are reduced to 1 page max using 10pt Arial and not full of legalese that the average person doesn't understand.

Maybe there should be a law that terms of service are non-enforceable if they are too long.

opt-in the perpetrators

[spaceman375]

Time for the EFF to become a customer of these "services" from verizon, google, facebook, etc. Then they can start a daily report called "Browsing Habits of the 1% and Their Families." Throw in a few demographic reports on the top 10% broken down by zip code, or by political affiliation. Re-tweet the top words and phrases on twitter from the topmost identifiable household income levels. That might get a reaction.