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Verizon Up Offers Rewards in Exchange For Customers' Personal Information (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A new Verizon rewards program, Verizon Up, provides credits that wireless subscribers can use for concert tickets, movie premieres and phone upgrades. But it comes with a catch: Customers must give the carrier access to their web-browsing history, app usage and location data, which Verizon says it uses to personalize the rewards and deliver targeted advertising as its customers browse the web. The trade-off is part of Verizon's effort to build a digital advertising business to compete with web giants Facebook and Google, which often already possess much of the same customer information. Even though Congress earlier this year dismantled tough privacy regulations on telecommunications providers, Verizon still wants customers to opt-in to its most comprehensive advertising program, called Verizon Selects. Data collected under the program is shared with Oath, the digital-media unit Verizon created when it bought AOL and Yahoo. Since access to data from customers could make it easier to tailor ads to their liking, Verizon hopes the information will help it gain advertising revenue to offset sluggish growth in its cellular business.See a current list of Verizon plans here.
Just with more information and not paywalled?
I mean this one.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Verizon still wants customers to opt-in to its most comprehensive advertising program
Credit where it's due: they at least made this opt-in instead of opt-out. That's the way this should be handled, and it's also the way Google, Facebook, Instagram, and others should be doing, rather than blanket mass surveillance.
Now, people who sign up for this are foolish. But that's a separate topic.
...and yet the odds of kids (under 25) allowing them to do jut that? Almost perfect. After all, what use do they have for privacy?
Hate to say it, but Verizon's already done the math (no joke intended), and they see it as potentially profitable, IMHO precisely because of this.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
While this program is a horrible violation of privacy, as long as the entire program is opt-in it is acceptable.
It'd just be slow news if it was only originally on Ars, but it was posted right here on slashdot too. Same story from a month ago.
Oh no... it's the future.