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Verizon Draws Fire For Monitoring App Usage, Browsing Habits
An anonymous reader writes "'We're able to view just everything that they do,' Bill Diggins, U.S. chief for the Verizon Wireless marketing initiative, told an industry conference earlier this year. 'And that's really where data is going today. Data is the new oil.' From the article: 'The company this month began offering reports to marketers showing what Verizon subscribers are doing on their phones and other mobile devices, including what iOS and Android apps are in use in which locations. Verizon says it may link the data to third-party databases with information about customers' gender, age, and even details such as "sports enthusiast, frequent diner or pet owner."'"
Even more opportunity for me to get offers for things I REALLY DON'T NEED.
Verizon's the first, but watch Google and others to follow now that it's mainstreamed. We're all going to get put into consumer categories based on our online activities:
sports fan, shoe fetish, gear head, porn enthusiast
These will match up to categories of products which we will then see repeatedly everywhere we go until we get so paranoid we buy them just to feel normal.
It's like minority report, but as a for-profit business instead of a pre-crime intervention.
Verizon Wireless says that its initiative, called Precision Market Insights, is legal because the information is aggregated and doesn't reveal customers' identities.
The thought of "ethical" or "good for the customers" isn't in their vocabulary, is it?
If they found the legal loophole that allowed literally ass-raping customers to make extra money, they'd use it the same day.
Mr Reese, I have a new number for you. This one is about to go buy a KFC. You have 15 mins to get there before he does and make sure he buys McDonalds.
OK Mr Finch, how do you suggest I persuade him? The M16 or the AK47?
Root the phone and kill their monitoring ability. Cyanogen Mod is better than anything that Verizon will roll out.
There should be a limit on the number of details that can be linked. Sure they don't give you an exact name and address, but after 4 or 5 things that include location based info, you can ID someone.
How much would a court of law need to reasonably identify a person? More, less?
I guess I'll start getting ads for porn sites.
... whose president, a couple of years ago, surprised some people announcing coldly that he was there exclusively to 'provide receptive brain time to ads', and nothing else...
A receptive brain provider, in his own french terms: 'fournisseur de cerveau disponible'.
The TV indeed you can choose not to have; the GSM seems a bit harder.
Maybe the solution is to separate functions: having a minimal-but-tetherable phone, and pair it with a small tablet that you (may?) control better, or at least whose data won't immediately belong to the phone supplier?
I for one use a Blackberry Playbook (walled garden, but no relation to the A/G duopoly, and there does exist a couple of ad-filtering browsers), after trying to wait till the first Linux tablet...
Herve S.
...Verizon would be receiving an anti-trust conviction a few hours after admitting something like this.
When Congress granted US telcos immunity in 2008 it set this up then. Now they think they can act with impunity and are above the law. And they know, if they happen to be breaking the law, nobody will go to jail, no penalties will be paid, they'll just sponsor a few Congresscritters and any snooping will be legalized.
I also wonder if this is deep packet inspection only, because what Apps your using would only work if those apps were cloud services. However there is a piece of spyware that was installed on US phones, Android, iPhone and Windows Phones, Carrier IQ, which did have the ability to monitor app usage on the phone itself.
So I wonder if we aren't seeing the result of that spyware on the phone.
Need more TOR! https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/
How do you know?
Verizon has its own definition of 'unlimited' why would they not do the same for 'opt-out'?
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Wasn't there supposed to be some modicum of privacy afforded to the end-users by the networks if all they did was run a comm-channel? I guess the retro-active pardoning of the telco-spying on all customers turned the notion of privacy inside-out. So along with goggle's staring at you at all of your port-80 traffic with doubleclicks and javascript and others using flash-based cookies, you've got to worry about eaves-dropping of all of your activity over you communications channels.
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I'm sure that "our" express consent is buried somewhere in the fine-print of the ever-changeable-when-they-want-to user agreements. That concept of one-sided ability of the service provided to change the terms of the usage-agreement at any time and without notice has to be the most odious of the gotchas that exist in this world. I'm not face-booking because they change their privacy policy as often as possible and always reset the privacy settings to show-the-world-everything-including-your-undies every time they update anything like timeline.
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Can the Public Utilities Commission do anything about this? or are cell-phone/wireless plans beyond the scope of the PUCs?
Bill, Think about all the things you do each day, and then have the thought of having it published to anyone trying to make a buck. Between calls from "rachel of Credit Card service". "FOP", various political survey, my homeline phone number almost useless. Compound that with turning my smart phone in yet another targeted ad platform means that I consider Bill Diggens and his ilk to be enemies of the state.
If I'm going to be a commodity, I'd like to be compensated.
What level of access do they have? I need details explaining more. Can they see what you are doing when you are on a cellular network, or when you are on wifi too.
Can they see what you are doing when you are using private browsing? Are they capturing passwords and storing them? Is the device pushing back secure information to them?
Does a VPN prevent tracking?
I expect some things when using a cellphone. Having them essentially listen in on all my communication or interaction with others is not one of them.
We notice that you've been modifying your behavior in response to our tagging. To better serve you, we have tagged you paranoid in our consumer tracking database. This tag reflects your interests and desires as a consumer.
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I tried to turn this kind of information sharing off for my account and got the following message:
"We were unable to complete your requested change at this time. Please try again later."
Every site you have an account with can, and probably does record statistics about what you do. Amazon has made a business out of it.
/. has data on us. Ever look at your account and see all comments you've ever posted? Ever notice the "You may like to read" section? Is that the same for everyone, or is it tailored to the types of articles you read regularly?
/. for anonymous posing! (or is it really anonymous?)
I'm sure even
Is tracking wright or wrong? On one hand it gives us product (article) suggestions that match our personal taste. I spoken to some common folk that LOVE this. But at the cost of your tracking your personl habits is the price too high? Do we even have choice? I don't think there is an answer.
Thank
There's crossing the line, and then there's blowing past it in a rocket car while going for the world land speed record.
Did you every think when you were younger, if you remember before the Internet, that your phone company would listen in on your conversations, analyze them word for word, tally them up and present them to advertisers in neat little charts?
The government does that? Heck I'm not doing anything wrong.
The utility does it for profit? Mmmm.. no.
The hulking sasquatch in the corner is that you can in fact find out things about people, or even more easily, about tiny groups of interest, even if you have stripped the caller data. And what if one of your marketing customers has written some finely targeted apps, for which they buy the report? It may be quite easy to integrate the additional data with what they have already got.
...good thing I no longer use their image.
I'm sure they're still monitoring my data, but I doubt cyanogenmod sends them info on my app usage.
I just wish the CM team would make an INC 2 image past 7. Despite the fact their news posts claim they support it, I've yet to see one.
I've tried the unofficial builds but they haven't played well with my phone, the last one i tried sent my battery into overdrive.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
It'll be a sham opt out. Verizon are so untrustworthy that they mine and sell your secrets, yet trustworthy enough to honor an opt-out? No way! Doing that will simply put a 'likes privacy'flag on the packet of data they're selling.
Myself I think Verizon will hire astroturfing companies:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110622211824/http://advantageconsultants.org/
Verizon did this before, on the “freedom in telecommunications” bill, to block a competitor:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/3903-the-purpose-of-a-free-press
Lots of fake comments supporting the bill and misrepresenting its contents. A quick dig to see what they're up to now, they seems to have been hired to get Alan Grayson elected in Florida as a fake tea party candidate:
http://teapartywire.com/faketeaparty/tag/doug-guetzloe/
Dress him up, give him fake tea party reformer credentials backed by lots of 'honest' citizens repeating his talking points. Works too, he's well ahead.
So expect to see a lot of Verizon customer' comments in the press about how customers are really excited about this, all the potential new services this data will bring, how free markets will decide etc. and how everyone should look at the real villains like ...[list]
Funny how corporations are people, often lots and lots of them, all saying the same talking points:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/27/1010778/-BREAKING-Leaked-Rove-email-singles-out-Daily-Kos
VPN to your home PC, access Tor through that. Orbot is also an alternative, but you lose some anonymity / plausible deniability ("No, that was relay traffic. I wasn't using Tor at the time that really bad thing happened") by not running as a relay (which would be expensive on a limited data plan).
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Uh? can't you even vote with your wallet ? drop Verizon and get a new contract with some other carrier ?
I don't understand why people are not all over this. This is a complete disregard for the law. This is wiretapping and selling the results. Period. Its illegal under existing laws for telcos to do this. The only satisfactory solution is to throw the board, and the CEO, and likely many other Verizon executives, into prison for 30-60 years and fine the shit out of the company to the tune of several billion. Anything less is unacceptable. Anything less is just more proof of how incredibly corrupt our government has become. The fact they are not already in prison is wonderful proof of just how far this country has shifted away from a democratic republic to corporatism.
This is not acceptable in any way. Anything else is simply an open invitation to a police state.
"I would certainly be labeled a sports porn head gear fetish enthusiast"
Really?!
And you missed your chance to link to GearFetish.com?
So much for targeted advertising.
Maybe this explains why the Verizon Remote Diagnostics app has been launching itself on my phone even though I haven't called Verizon and asked for any assistance. Verizon has stated that this app will only be launched with the customers consent during a service call, but that's a bold faced lie.
Well, that explains why all the advertising I get is for coeds and MILFs looking for fsck buddies in my area. Too bad they can't filter who they sell my info to better. If only one of those offers wasn't a scam ... sigh. :P
My contract with AT&T ends in December. Now I can scratch Verizon off the list. Now which company DOESN'T do this?
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
It taught the telcos that it's ok to break the law, they can always fix it in the politics later. Just like the last time.
The solution is to only use encrypted services. If your fav site or does not encrypt ask the provider to add that option.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
that prevents the phone company from using or publishing anything they overhear in phone conversations.
They must have access to the calls because they carry them, but they are prevented by law from misusing this access.
It looks like we need the same sort of rules for ISP's and data service providers.
Just because your are carrying the packet doesn't mean you should look at it more than is required to carry it.
I used to be able to VPN to home on my old carrier.
More recently I attempted, and neither PPTP and L2TP worked. I'm still investigating for other causes, but I wouldn't be surprised to find it's blocked.
Rather than ignoring the postcards that guarantee me a whopping $10 in the settlement, I might actually file my own claim just to be a jerk. I'm big on privacy and if this is true, I wouldn't be unhappy to see them run into the ground for this.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
It's just so precious and cute that people thought any cellphone company wasn't doing this already. Especially after the telcos got a free pass for spying on behalf of the goverment already!
Do you still believe in santa too?
Can't wait for the google phone. Free phone. Zero fees. With all the same tracking that any other phone has. From a company that says right up front we're tracking everything everywhere.
Honest scumbag company beats dishonest scumbag company any day.
Have gnu, will travel.
"'We're able to view just everything that they do,' Bill Diggins, U.S. chief for the Verizon Wireless marketing initiative, told an industry conference earlier this year.
All I have to say is that guy better have a huge jock strap. The size of his balls must be staggering to make a comment like that.
1) A lot of corporations use Verizon as the carrier for their company-owned cell phones; depending on who uses what apps and phones, this data mining could easily be construed as corporate espionage, as well as national security risk. Example: Defense contracting company who uses AutoCAD Mobile app to share top-secret designs among their engineers.
2) Albeit spoken by a true, obvious d-bag, the statement "data is the new oil" is a damn fine analogy IMO. Why, you may ask? Because no one gets to mine oil off my property without paying me for usage rights, and my data should be under the same consideration. Not only should mining my data for for-profit purposes require my explicit permission, it should also require fair compensation (fair to me, not Verizon).
Someone who's a better writer than me needs to draft up a letter to Congresscritters that we can all copy/paste to indicate our chagrin.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/08/06/169234/carriers-blame-the-iphone-for-data-caps-and-increased-upgrade-fees
Now they have to try and get that up to 75% by selling your online activity!
I'd love to have a smartphone, but on the other hand, I value not being sold to advertisers like a slab of meat even more.
Seems to me the only thing that makes this data valuable is the fact that the buyers assume it is pure - meaning, that they think that your browsing habits actually reflect your interests and purchasing habits. I know I've seen talk of this before but why not simply have an app that randomly runs arbitrary apps and browses arbitrary pages in order to contaminate the data? If all of Verizon's users browsing habits looked similar from using such an app and it was well known that the data was not actually representative of the user, Verizon would essentially be selling garbage. I find it unlikely advertisers would pay good money for garbage.
the 'drawing fire' involves real bullets
Verizon just uses DNS hijacking to record your sites.
So the easy solution is to use Norton, Open, or Comodo DNS. They also offer malware and phishing protection as well. do that and your computer wont be sniffed. The IP addresses do not mean anything without a DNS record to correspond.
http://saveie6.com/
Pay attention to this site:
http://www.privacysos.org/blog thank you
Interestingly, Tim Wu, in his most excellent book, Master Switch, explains how the original AT&T has recombined to its original corporate form (only bigger and more powerful with all the acquisitions when it was ostensibly "broken up"). The one supposed exception is Verizon, but following the circuitous ownership of Verizon through many, many subsequent points of ownership, one finds the majority owner turns out to be GE, which was owned by the original owners of AT&T (Rockefeller & Morgan) --- so who is really the owner of the entire shebang???? [probably still Morgan and Rockefeller families]
Browse over to AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile to compare plans and devices. See what they do with that data.
Hmmm....so, what's this Business Round Table???
http://publicintelligence.net/business-roundtable/
So who's on it?
Ivan G. Seidenberg, Chairman, Chairman & CEO, Verizon Communications
Randall L. Stephenson, At-large member, Chairman & CEO, AT&T Inc.
Jeffrey R. Immelt (Jeff), At-large member, Chairman & CEO, General Electric Company
So the easy solution is to use Norton, Open, or Comodo DNS. They also offer malware and phishing protection as well. do that and your computer wont be sniffed. The IP addresses do not mean anything without a DNS record to correspond.
The easy solution is to not have a smartphone. Seriously, I'm already tired from maintaining my security and privacy on my home/work PCs. Now I have to constantly fuck with my phone too? Not worth it.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
When a carrier in the Netherlands announced this earlier, a big uproar resulted.
A law was (very quickly) passed to disallow this traffic inspection and differential charging that could be based on it.
Result: the carriers retaliated. All unlimited data plans were scrapped, now everyone pays by the megabyte or has a data cap.
I went to the web site to opt out, dug through all kinds of menus to find it (it was buried), finally found the opt out link, clicked it and it said:
"This service is currently unavailable"
I don't call em BIG EVIL as a joke.
Unfortunately, 99.999999999999 percent of you are not in ear shot when I shout profanties regarding verizon.
Look, they are out to fuck you and it shouldn't be a shocker when they pull a facebook.
Very good site!