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The $24B Data Business That Telcos Don't Want to Talk About
- guelo 11y agoThey are using public airwaves. "We" can regulate them. If there is any "we" remaining in our shitty excuse for democracy.
- monksy 11y agoThere are marketers out there who do ping your cell location so that they can use that to market items to you.
- cm2187 11y agoI can understand that when people are using a free service, they are the product. But mobile contracts are by no mean free. I find that amazing that the TelCos would even contemplate charging their customers and at the same time using them as products.
- forgottenpass 11y agoThe "if you're not paying, you're the product" quip was just a way to get people to swallow the surveillance business model. Now that it's a viable model, why would anyone choose to have N-1 revenue streams when they could have N? It's not like businesses always act on principle over profits. Combine the consumer's low perceived value of privacy (thanks to intentional and unintentional actions of the businesses doing the surveillance), the fact privacy is largely a market for lemons, and the low number of options in the marketplace. Together you get service providers that rarely lose business for choosing to survival their customers.
- eslaught 11y agoCable TV is also not free, but people put up with ads (at least in the US). In fact, I'm not sure people even remember that one of the original propositions of cable was that it was ad free. I think a more accurate adage would be that if companies can get away with ads (or gathering and selling personal data), then they will do so. Unfortunately it would appear that giving money directly to service providers does not actually protect you from such things, and I suspect the reason is fairly straightforward: All companies are driven to increase margins as much as possible, and will eventually feel financial pressure to try such measures. Unless consumers object strongly (i.e.: leave the service in numbers large enough to offset the benefits of a measure under consideration), such measures will in general find their way into use. So what we're really saying is consumers need to pay companies more than the money would get otherwise. If consumers aren't willing to pay that price (and it shouldn't surprise us if they aren't---this can be a lot of money), then we shouldn't be surprised if such things show up, regardless of whether the service is paid or not.
- rhino369 11y ago>In fact, I'm not sure people even remember that one of the original propositions of cable was that it was ad free. That's mostly a myth. The original purpose of cable was to get TV signal in areas where broadcast didn't go. The first basic cable channels were TBS--which had advertisements--and Christian Broadcast Network--which probably didn't. The unfiltered cable stations, for the most part, had advertisements. You are likely remembering HBO, Cinemax, The Movie Channel advertisements. They didn't have advertisements because you had to pay per channel.
- antsar 11y agoSo what we're really saying is consumers need to pay companies more than the money would get otherwise. And what will stop them from running ads on top of that anyway?
- cm2187 11y agoThe TV business model is dying. A few more years and they will only be watched in retirement homes.
- blumkvist 11y agoYou mean like the NYT and pretty much every magazine sells the product, but also has ads?
- 6d0debc071 11y ago> I find that amazing that the TelCos would even contemplate charging their customers and at the same time using them as products. What are you going to do? Go to a TelCo that doesn't? It's a gamble, but considering the limited alternatives it's not much of one.
- cm2187 11y agoIt won't take long for alternative phone OS that do not broadcast the location (whether it is compliant with regulations or not). If all the telco can tell is which tower is activated, it will limit a lot their spying capacity.
- wtracy 11y agoThe network itself knows your location because your signal is usually visible to multiple cell towers. They can triangulate your location from that.
- ademarre 11y ago> I find that amazing that the TelCos would even contemplate charging their customers and at the same time using them as products. Nothing the telcos might do would be amazing to me anymore.
- malchow 11y agoI am always surprised that ad block users do not also refuse to use smartphones. If you ask me, I'd rather Amazon retarget a bag of chips at me via a 300x250 display ad than Verizon sell my location breadcrumbs to some unknown entity.
- stonogo 11y agoAdblocking is available on mobile platforms.
- geekamongus 11y agoGhostery browser FTW.
- ATsch 11y agoI have bad news for you, Ghosterys privacy policy and T&C allows them to sell data about your browsing activity to third parties. I'll link them here once I get home and off my throttled connection.
- mikegioia 11y agoIf you're talking about Ghostrank than that's totally opt-in. If you're not then I'll need to see some evidence of this because their privacy policy mentions nothing about selling browsing habits: https://www.ghostery.com/about-us/privacy-statements/ghostery-browser-extension/ghostery-browser-extension-privacy-statement/ https://www.ghostery.com/about-us/privacy-statements/ghoster...
- ATsch 11y agoIt seems you are correct. However I remember having removed Ghostery from all of my Computers after reading their privacy policy. The current version looks to be fine.
- aembleton 11y ago
- pdkl95 11y agohttps://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#bernstein https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html... DJB's hilarious talk on this topic. ("I AM the man in the middle!")
- csense 11y agoIf you're concerned about this, you should use an Android device with a no-contract plan you pay for with cash.
- darod 11y agohow would this circumvent the issue? you'd still have to get a plan with a carrier. they can still track your location and your habits through the data that you're sending through their network.
- dublinben 11y agoThey can't correlate that behavior with you as an individual if you don't provide any personal information to the carrier. You could also just run your traffic through a VPN and avoid all of this.
- outside1234 11y agodo they really need us to provide personal information? they can get a +/- 10m GPS lock on our home location.
- dublinben 11y agoSeveral dozen people live within a 10m radius of where I do. I'm not even a registered resident at that location, so they'll have a difficult time correlating "my" data to my personal information.
- Retra 11y agoIf there is any continuity to your phone usage, then that is you as an individual that is being tracked. That's what it means for a person to have an identity: continuity in behavior patterns. It's safe to assume those several dozen people don't share your phone. And even if they did, that's a level of familiarity that means you are among a group of people that probably operate as an economic unit. Nobody is stealing you identity here: they are assigning you one.
- hackuser 11y agoI'm surprised that HN readers would find this surprising. It's well known that cellular providers track user locations, Internet usage, and probably other things. It's well known that a very widely used strategy is to collect as much information as possible about end users by businesses for targeted sales and marketing, and by governments for security/control (to varying degrees depending on where you live, but it's even spread to poor nations such as Sudan [1]). Why is this story a surprise? I assumed it has been happening for a long time. [1] http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/10/african-states-hop-tech-surveillance-bandwagon/122876/ http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/10/african-states-...
- falcolas 11y agoSome of us wish to think the best about people or corporations. Naive, sure, but you have to start your chain of trust somewhere. > It's well known that a very widely used strategy is to collect as much information as possible about end users by businesses for targeted sales and marketing Yes, but it's usually limited to free services, or low cost services. It's rarely applied wholesale to a group who is already paying through the nose for crappy service.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago> Yes, but it's usually limited to free services, or low cost services. It's rarely applied wholesale to a group who is already paying through the nose for crappy service. Why would you expect that? There's nothing about increased privacy levels in ToS or in product marketing, nor there was ever in history an actual, significant demand for privacy services. It may change now, as all the stories broken over the years slowly make people care about tracking. But why would anyone assume that if you pay for something, you get special treatment? You get only the minimum required treatment that's spelled in the contract. That's how it always has been everywhere.
- wrsh07 11y agoWhat's particularly outrageous about this is that there is seemingly no way for consumers to make a market "choice" for privacy.
- vonnik 11y agoTelcos are using deep learning to cluster and classify users, and model and detect ab/normal behavior for everything from ads to fraud detection. Some are using us: http://deeplearning4j.org http://deeplearning4j.org
- hackuser 11y agoI've been trying to think of a practical, effective way for smartphone end users to protect their confidentiality. This is the simplest solution I've come up with, but I'd appreciate any feedback: Hardware: * Tablet, or smartphone with baseband disabled. * Cellular-wifi router (i.e., wifi hotspot), prepaid so the provider doesn't need your personal info. . Software: * Android with per-app permissions controlled by user (e.g., user can enable/disable access to location data for particular apps). This could be a fork of Android or maybe there is security software that could be installed, such as on a rooted phone. * VOIP app on phone * VPN . By decoupling the baseband from the handheld computer (i.e., by keeping the tablet and cellular connection on different devices), using the cellular service without providing identifying info, and sending only encrypted data over the cellular connection (via VPN), you would protect your confidentiality from the cellular provider. Because your phone number is decoupled from your cellular service (because you use VOIP over a VPN), nobody can tie your phone number to your location. Of course someone who is determined could track you down. Your identity needs to be tied to your phone number or nobody will know how to call you; and your VOIP vendor could point someone to your VPN provider, who could point them to your cellular provider, who could figure out which hotspot you use. But I think it does protect you from everyday mass surveillance. Any thoughts on how practical or effective this would be?
- dublinben 11y agoThere is a very thorough guide for achieving pretty much this from the Tor Project blog.[0] The most significant part in this process is completely separating the baseband from your user device. [0] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardenin...
- superuser2 11y agoVoIP calls over VPN over cellular data are likely to have extreme reliability, latency, and jitter problems.
- hackuser 11y agoI was wondering about that. * Regarding the VPN: Inevitably it adds an extra hop but with a VPN that provides sufficient bandwidth, low latency, and sufficient processing resources to decrypt/encrypt at wire speed -- I assume that either it will cost extra or will be something the user has to setup at a good hosting provider -- couldn't performance be sufficient for voice? IIRC, from long ago, voice needs ~80 Kbps. * Regarding cellular data: Cellular connections are very widely used for voice, of course. Cellular data connections are used now (e.g., VoLTE). On one hand I'd have the same doubts you do; on the other it seems to work. Aren't there already VOIP apps?
- spankalee 11y agoSomewhat ironically, given many people's feelings about Google and tracking, Google's Project fi might be the best network for privacy. Yes, Google targets ads based on some portion of your profile, but they do not sell your data to 3rd parties like the carriers. Edit: I got curious and it looks like fi excludes call data from being shared with other Google services. https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6181037?hl=en https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6181037?hl=en Disclaimer: I work for Google (not of fi) so take my opinion with whatever size gain of salt you feel is appropriate.
- randomfool 11y agoFi traffic still traverses the telco's network. Unless Google has special privacy clauses in place, there does not appear to be anything blocking Sprint (et al) from implementing the 'what websites are users visiting while in your store' feature mentioned in the article.
- fsaintjacques 11y agoExcept Telcos cannot link (time, ip) with a paid account when traffic is only passing through them.
- rhino369 11y agoI don't get why Google acting as a vertical monopoly in the data tracking -> advertising value chain makes it better.
- droopybuns 11y agoGoogle gets into "fiber," which is a strategic threat to carriers. Carriers get into analytics, which is a strategic threat to google. The headline is misleading- I think the carriers have been pretty upfront with their shareholders about their intention to get into this space. In a world with facebook, google, et.al., writing an article like this without that context is incredibly cynical.
- r00fus 11y agoThis says "Telcos" and then lists specific names. Do we know for sure that any telcos (my concern is US-based) who do not do this? e.g.: T-mobile? I have less hopes for AT&T...
- katekaye 11y agoI wrote this story and spent months trying to get these guys to talk. As I note in the story, "Verizon and Sprint declined to comment for this story. AT&T and T-Mobile said they don’t share consumer or location data with SAP, Sybase, AirSage or Vistar."
- sitkack 11y agoThe data cannot for all intents and purposes be anonymized and still be useful. I have seen airsage data, they give the user a new unique identifier but it is consistent over a 30 day window. Very easy to deanonymize, the unique identifiers are only opaque to people who can't do math.
- e12e 11y agoYeah, data anonymization doesn't really work, except perhaps for highly aggregated data (eg: percentage of people out of work in a nation). It does provide a small barrier in the form that "if you don't look, you won't see" -- so it might prevent some inadvertent leaks of private information. But it should rarely be considered a "security boundary" so to speak.
- aianus 11y agoWhy not? It's not hard to set up streaming filters that count how many people visit a certain mall in realtime without ever persisting the raw location stream.
- e12e 11y agoRight. But when the data you have is detailed logs of individual movements, second by second, meter by meter - stepping down to "number of unique IMEIs in a 100 square km area" is moving to "highly aggregated data". If that is what is seen as anonymization, the yeah. But then you've pretty much reduced a dataset to information that answers a specific question. Typically anonymization is (AFIK/IMNHO) taken to mean taka a dataset that can answer some questions, and transform it to a dataset that can still answer some questions we haven't come up with, but avoids answering questions that lead to identifying individuals. Eg: the problem with the NYC taxi driver data: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/poorly-anonymized-logs-reveal-nyc-cab-drivers-detailed-whereabouts/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/poorly-anonymized...
- chollida1 11y agoMany hedge funds have started to consume this type of data. There is a piece in WSJ that discusses how one fund, two sigma, uses cell phone tracking data, as well as many other sources of data to build trading signals. http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-computers-trawl-a-sea-of-data-for-stock-picks-1427941801 http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-computers-trawl-a-sea-of-dat... In fact, I think the biggest funds are putting more effort into this type of big data exploration from funds than they are into trying to glean more information out of the time series data provided by the exchanges data feeds. 10 years ago, being able to scrape the web was a competitive advantage for funds, 5 years ago it was real time sentiment analysis of news reports. Today, its being able to consume 100's of disparate data feeds and build alpha generating signals from it.
- Animats 11y agoAre they tracking the CEOs of companies in which they invest, or what? Tracking A, B, and C-level executives should be very profitable. Who meets with whom is valuable info. Especially when you also have their phone call metadata. The activity in advance of a merger should be quite visible. Tracking elected officials should reveal who influences whom, and who's bribing whom. It may be possible to detect bribery to the level of establishing probable cause for an investigation in that way.
- pyvpx 11y agomy initial thought was how many teens are patronizing $MALL_STORE or how many people are stopping at Chevron gas stations versus Shell. at least that's more demographic/general, in my opinion. what you suggest is bordering "creepy".
- WalterBright 11y agoPeter Lynch, of Magellan fame, wrote that he'd hang out in shopping malls looking at store traffic.
- donkeyd 11y agoJust bordering? Seems full on creepy to me.
- sitkack 11y agoI would consider this illegal wire tapping. Just because the carrier has the location data as part of its operations doesn't mean it can use that data for any other reason besides providing service. I am glad this story is out, I have seen airsage data and it is easy to deanonymize. This company shouldn't be in business.
- pearjuice 11y agoI wonder where they get that number from.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mikeyanderson 11y agoIt's crazy. I was at a big data conference and had a sales person tell me that they are a broker for several of the large telcos and that you could use the real world data of the as a datapoint for your programmatic ad buys. His example was horrible—but he said that they found that diaper companies had a shot at advertising to dads and getting moms to try a new brand so they used cell data to look at porn usage, browsing patterns that show that they have a child to do programmatic buys. It's getting way too creepy for me.
- rizwank 11y agoWhat conference was that?
- cynoclast 11y agoWas anyone super annoyed by the gigantic unnecessary top menu that moves with you as you scroll?
- CurtMonash 11y agoDeanonymization technology is very good. Does that still surprise anybody who's technically knowledgeable?
- alecco 11y agoSure, but it's short term. Calls and messages are dropping every month, even on developing markets. The raise of WhatsApp and similar messengers (FB, Hangouts) is exponential, no hyperbole. Telcos are dead and they don't want to admit it. I'd bet my money on super cheap mobile ISPs raising soon. Based on a completely different technology and making better use of the mostly empty spectrum.
- anon1mous 11y agoYeah, privacy is dead and gone. The other day I was in UK at a Tesco open doors event. They talked mainly about tribes and agile, but also demoed a couple of new technologies. Turns out they have face tracking operational on all their petrol stations. And they have, in lab, cameras and software that does face recognition and eye tracking. They plan to send targeted ads and coupons, based on what shelve products caught customer's attention.
- mkj 11y agoHow do telcos get GPS or wifi-level accurate location information? Are the phones sending that (easy enough to disable with software changes) or some other mechanism?
- twsted 11y agoThey get cell-tower-level accurate location information.
- arca_vorago 11y agoOne of my problems with this is how there is such a huge lack of alternatives for some people. I dropped having a cell for almost a year, and it was wonderful, in that I felt more secure about my privacy, but It also greatly affected my interaction, observation, and awareness of my surroundings. After meeting someone and getting a job that required on call though, it's now hard for me to imagine how I could go back to that again. To me, it's one more way that technology is evolving faster than people are keeping up with, but the kicker is that it's ripe for abuse by negarious entities. As Thomas Drake says, the Stasi's would have wet dreams about this tech today, and although you may not thing the $currentpower is so bad, what happens when the next guy uses the prescedent, forces the telcos to share, and dissapears anyone who disagrees about $policy? Oh, and now he has enough data to walk the cat back a few years and ex post facto you to $blacksite?
- Aissen 11y agoSee this paper "Header Enrichment or ISP Enrichment? Emerging Privacy Threats in Mobile Networks": http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2015/pdf/papers/hotmiddlebox/p25.pdf http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2015/pdf/papers/hotmi... For example Orange in Jordan adds an HTTP header with the phone number of the client to every connection. And there are technical people out there still saying HTTPS/TLS should not be mandatory…