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

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: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: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.

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: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.

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.

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.