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Verizon's New Rewards Program Lets It Track Your Browsing History (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the permission-to-track dept.

The new "Verizon Up" rewards program released this week by Big Red awards users a credit for every $300 they spend on their Verizon bill that can be redeemed toward various rewards. The only catch is that Verizon requires you to enroll in Verizon Selects, a program that allows the company to track a huge chunk of your personal data. The Verge reports: That includes web browsing, app usage, device location, service usage, demographic info, postal or email address, and your interests. Furthermore, that data gets shared with Verizon's newly formed Oath combination (aka AOL and Yahoo), plus with "vendors and partners" who work with Verizon. Which is kind of a long list of people who have access to what feels like a fairly significant amount of your data. It's worth noting that Verizon has been operating under these terms and conditions for a while with an earlier rewards program called "Smart Rewards," which also required users to opt in to the Verizon Selects tracking program. But that doesn't make it any better that this is the trade-off you're forced to make to take advantage of the rewards.

2 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Re: $300 for your life by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    They don't give $300, they give "rewards" for every $300 you spend, but only if you agree to their tracking scheme. This is like trading privacy for coupons.

  2. Re: rewards, schmewards by orlanz · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...they're closer to but still greater than the price you would pay on ...

    THIS! So for most rewards programs, I have found this to be true. It drives me nuts that after all those resources spent on promotion of the program, websites, call centers, programming, tracking algorithms, and service upkeep, that all one gets is second rate pricing! Worse, in many cases, the rewards are based on non-discounted purchases only. So you spend MSRP on something, you collect rewards, and then you spend maket value+$ on something else. If you went to a discount website and Amazon, you would have spent LESS for both.

    And then I get a little sad that these programs have been around for years which means enough ppl are using them to keep them profitable.