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Verizon To Pay $1.35 Million Fine To Settle US Privacy Probe (reuters.com)
chasm22 writes: Verizon Communications Inc agreed to pay a $1.35 million fine after the Federal Communications Commission said on Monday it found the company's wireless unit violated the privacy of its users. Verizon Wireless agreed to get consumer consent before sending data about "supercookies" from its more than 100 million users, under a settlement. The largest U.S. mobile company inserted unique tracking codes in its users traffic for advertising purposes. Supercookies are unique, non-removable identifiers inserted into web traffic to identify customers in order to deliver targeted ads from Verizon and others. The FCC said Verizon Wireless failed to disclose the practice from late 2012 until 2014, violating a 2010 FCC regulation on internet transparency. The FCC also said the supercookies overrode consumers privacy practices they had set on web browsers, which led some advocates to call it a "zombie cookie." Under the agreement, consumers must opt in to allow their information to be shared outside Verizon Wireless, and have the right to "opt out" of sharing information with Verizon.
Out of the millions of customers and millions in lawyer fees subtracted from the wrist slap fine they received, you would be lucky to get the price of a stamp covered.
$1.35 million dollars is chump change to verizon - should be $135 million so they notice it.
$1.35 million is such a tiny "penalty" that it really gets me steamed. This is a company that was actively modifying user's request to suit their interests, with no opt out and no ability for the user to even know it was happening. And when I contacted their support over it, the actively and vehemently denied doin it even as I watched it happening in the packet capture between my phone and web server, even contacted an attorney over it, but he wouldn't take the case due to an inability to assign a dollar value to the "damage". Yes, you could avoid it by using HTTPS/TLS, but given the sloppy coding of many or most apps, and near zero visibility of the workings of those apps, how could you be sure you were avoiding it (and yes, I have to use apps occasionally for my side work that have no corollary web interface). This "fine" would only amount to fractions of a penny per user for years of what are essentially MITM attacks.
a $1.35 million fine [...] data about "supercookies" from its more than 100 million users
1 cent per customer, that will show them.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/sep/11/minnesota-woman-songs-illegally-downloaded
$220,000 for copying 24 songs
or
In 2009, a jury ordered Tenenbaum – who graduated from Boston University with a doctorate in statistical physics in May – to pay $675,000 in damages fro copying 30 songs.
Maybe its about time that corporations started getting fines of 10-20 times their income
"Pocket change" to Verizon.
Nornally I'd agree. In this case though it's worse than that. Verizon will make more money next year and each subsequent year due to their illegal action than they paid in the fine. What this did is allow people to bootstrap mobile data and prove that consumer information is worth money. It also loaded a bunch of data into Verizon's partners databases (note how there's nothing in the settlement about cleaning that out). Now, however, there are a bunch of other newer techniques for matching web browsers with mobiles and for getting people to agree to give their data. E.g. match their Facebook profile to their ID's kept in cookies by the advertisers. Now that these techniques are widespread and everyone knows they are valuable Verizon doesn't really need their supercookies any more.