Slashdot Mirror
Verizon's Offer: Let Us Track You, Get Free Stuff
mpicpp points out a new program from Verizon that is perfect if you don't mind being tracked. Are you comfortable having your location and Web browsing tracked for marketing purposes? If so, Verizon's got a deal for you. The wireless giant announced a new program this week called 'Smart Rewards' that offers customers credit card-style perks like discounts for shopping, travel and dining. You accrue points through the program by doing things like signing onto the Verizon website, paying your bill online and participating in the company's trade-in program. Verizon emphasizes that the data it collects is anonymized before it's shared with third parties. The program is novel in that offers Verizon users some compensation for the collection of their data, which has become big business for telecom and tech companies. Some privacy advocates have pushed data-collecting companies to reward customers for their personal information in the interest of transparency.
It sounds like the Google business plan being explained to me like I was five-years-old.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
In New Zealand we've got Flybuys.
For a retailer to be part of the programme, their POS system needs to send every item on your receipt to Flybuys. They don't just get "customer A spent $X at retailer Y". They get each product you bought, how much you paid for it, if it was on sale and what the payment method was.
It lets them do things like see the last time you bought a pregnancy test and a few months later, start putting specials for baby products in the next email you get sent by them on behalf of your local supermarket. Or if you buy a particular brand of razor, they might tell you about specials for blade refills.
In exchange for all that information, you get to spend reward points on selected products.
They're offering me discounts on stuff I probably don't need if I make it easier for people to try and sell me shit I don't want?
Anonymised? Pull the other one.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
(posting from my uber-low ID)
They were probably doing it anyway, and now want everyone to opt-in, so they can cover their arses before they got caught for tracking everyone without their consent.
Who told you about that?!
Wow, conspiracy nut..... whats next, the pin prick they give each child at birth for blood typing etc is actually inserting a miniature tracing beacon.
They start even sooner than that. Those sonograms expectant mothers get are actually hypnotoc coded instructions to the fetus that will turn them into jack booted thugs when they hear the keyword "Limbaugh" pronounced backwards. Then the Illuminati and Beyonce will implement the final portions of the new world order.
The clue is in the rainbows we can now see because of the essential fluid weakening chemicals and flourine they have been putting in our water.
Here is the incontrovertble proof. Stop those damn liberals NOW!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Wake UP America!!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Should Verizon change their name? NetZero did this back in the day, but with far less technology or "Big Data".
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
Just saying...
I think you're missing the point. It's not that this gives them permission to track you, like you said that's probably already in your service contract. The point is that it gives explicit permission to sell that data to somebody else, thus legitimizing it and making it more valuable by decreasing legal and PR risk.