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Ad Company Using Verizon Tracking Header To Recreate Deleted Cookies
itwbennett writes The story began a few months ago when it was reported that both Verizon and AT&T were injecting unique identifiers in the Web requests of their mobile customers. AT&T has since stopped using the system, but Verizon continues. Now, Stanford computer scientist Jonathan Mayer has found that one advertising company called Turn, which tracks users across the Web when they visit major sites including Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, BlueKai, AppNexus, Walmart and WebMD, uses the Verizon UIDH to respawn its own tracking cookies.
So Verizon inject encrypted cookies that identify the user, then sell the decryption key to add companies, so they can track users. I'd be reviewing the terms and conditions of the internet service. Surely they don't allow tampering? People should shame Verizon publicly and leave them, but calls for net neutrality laws are misguided. Verizon makes money from this, so they should end up cheaper than competitors who don't do this. Customers are free to choose to have less privacy for a cheaper service. Regulation isn't needed.
the "market" does not correct for corrupt practices like these, despite every libertarian fantasy to the contrary.
If they are injecting headers, that still won't work. Every http request will be identifying you. You need to browse in https and comfirm that your Verizon phone isn't using some dodgy built in Verizon CA. It is always a good idea to browse in privacy mode, especially because bank sites and other sites could have flaws like cross site scripting.