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AT&T Stops Using 'Super Cookies' To Track Cellphone Data
jriding (1076733) writes AT&T Mobility, the nation's second-largest cellular provider, says it's no longer attaching hidden Internet tracking codes to data transmitted from its users' smartphones. The practice made it nearly impossible to shield its subscribers' identities online.
Would be nice to hear something similar from Verizon.
OK, so this family walks into a talent agency, it’s a mother, l0n3s0m3phr34k, their son and daughter, and a little baby. l0n3s0m3phr34k says to the talent agent, “Sir, our family has an amazing act, we know if you would let us perform it for you, you would want to sign us.” And the talent agent says, “Sorry, we don’t sign family acts, they’re too cutesy.” But then the mother goes, “Please sir, if you just give us two minutes I know you’ll like our act.” So the talent agent says “Alright, ya got two minutes.”
So the family jumps right into it. The mother smiles and points at the son who hits “play” on a boombox. Thrilling circus music starts to play as l0n3s0m3phr34k spins his daughter around, bends her over, lifts up her skirt, and starts licking her asshole. Then the son lays down on the floor and opens his mouth and the mother tears off tear-away pants, squats down over his face and starts shitting all over him. l0n3s0m3phr34k grabs the baby, takes off his diaper and starts sucking his cock. While the son, still with his mother’s shit in his mouth, goes over and licks the baby’s tiny little balls.
Now the mother lays down on the floor while the daughter gets up high on a chair and starts pissing all over her. Then l0n3s0m3phr34k and son take the baby and start stuffing it head-first back into the mother’s vagina, while the daughter’s piss rains down on all of them.
They get the baby halfway in, so that just its legs are sticking out all flailing around. The son takes the mother’s shit out of his mouth and starts rubbing it all over everyone, while l0n3s0m3phr34k sticks his cock in the baby’s asshole and fucks it while it’s still inside the mother, until he comes all over the baby, the wife, the son and the daughter.
Then l0n3s0m3phr34k gets up and says “And now for our impersonation of the victims of 9/11.” The whole family starts running around the room screaming and laughing with their dicks and titties all flapping around covered with shit and piss and cum going “Aaaaugh! Aaaugh! The building’s coming down! Help!”
And finally the family runs back to the center of the room and goes “TA-DAAAA!!”
And the talent agent he just sits there for the longest time, and finally he says, “Jesus, that’s a hell of an act. What do you call it?”
And l0n3s0m3phr34k says, “The Aristocrats!”
AT&T *claims* to have stopped using internal tracking codes.
Whether or not you believe one of the top 3 most evil corporations on the planet is up to you.
"Would be nice to hear something similar from Verizon" Somehow I doubt we will hear them now...
"Good things don't end with eum, they end with mania or teria." - H. Simpson
It isn't verifiable. Trusting a corporation not to use and monetize information that you will never be able to prove it has isn't a rational act.
You are tracked in all things when you use a cellphone, period.
Six comments so far, and all very nice to AT&T. I would have expected more hating.
I'll try: fuck 'em.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
The pattern more than likely will be something like this:
1. get called out for bullshit, anti-consumer practice
2. Throw out PR spin about how they care about their customers, and don't do said practice
3. Finally admit to the practice, promise to stop
4. Wait a length of time until the practice becomes more 'industry standard', and the furor has died down
5. re implement under a new name
This tracking garbage is probably far too lucrative -- both to law enforcement (well they see themselves as law enforcement) and advertisers to ever really pass up.
Now that the genie is out of the bottle, it's not going back in.
This probably means they're just letting someone else on to their network to do it instead. So it would be true that AT&T isn't doing it, they're just letting someone else do it instead.
They believe being "compelled" to carry traffic with the content of which theydecide to disagree is a violation of their first amendment rights.
If you're like me, you flat-out rejected that statement, on sight. Right? There is simply no way that statement isn't some overhyped overheated drama? Clickbait or karma whoring or somebody nursing a grudge?
By denying Internet service providers their editorial discretion and by compelling them to convey content providers’ messages with which they may disagree, the Order violates broadband providers’ First Amendment rights
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Reading the TFA
AT&T Mobility, the nation's second-largest cellular provider, says it's no longer attaching hidden Internet tracking codes to data transmitted from its users' smartphones. The practice made it nearly impossible to shield its subscribers' identities online
Would be nice to hear something similar from Verizon
really makes me cringe!
First of all, why on earth we, the users, putting ourselves at the mercy of companies such as Verizon or AT&T?
I mean, WE PAID THEM to do the "data carrier job" for us, or in other words, they are not our boss
Why are we letting them having the power to inserting "super cookies" (or whatever fuck else they can come up with) inside the datastreams that we paid them to carry?
So many people making so much noise about FREE SERVICES search engines / social sites such as Google or FB for "tracking" them, where the hell are those people when PAID SERVICES such as AT&T and/or Verizon doing the same thing to them??
Why are we giving away so much of our own rights??
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
To a different way of doing it.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Maybe llllllllllll lllllll starting to feel dirty lllllllll llllllll on the world [which is not lllllll] or llllllllllll they are just llllllllll the cookie dough and llllllllllll cost effectively subbing out the bakery to llllllll llll llllllllll lllllllllll lll.
The way to end this is not to say, "Would be nice to hear something similar from Verizon" like it's some sort of game.
TFA (and the summary) are silent on the real question is which is, "What right do they have to fuck with my traffic?"
It's like they are asking to be reclassified as a Title II common carrier.
Of course. By now, they dont need cookies: they have all the data they need already through simple transparent snort and span ports.... man oh man....
NO SIG
The paranoid geek in me wants to know "So... If they have stopped using 'Super Cookies,' what are they using now?"
Translation: Repeating a fact I dislike destroys my freedom of speech.
Corollary translation: Exercising my freedom of speech means hiding the truth.
What CEO and lawyer had the stupidity to put this on the public record? Do corporations now feel so entitled that they can impose arbitrary censorship? Do they think the government (and consumers) owe their business interests unlimited protection?
This is why it's wrong for a corporation to be called a person.
Nothing more.
Maybe people doesn't realize that the machine minds that monitor packet traffic have gotten so good at what they do, they just don't need the keys to keep track of all of it. Take the other piece of news today that Google, is getting out of the "Pay" business for digital download content. That was just their method of familiarizing their algorithm writers with the financial transaction process. Now the computers do their masters snooping without needing the non-core business of barter.