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It's absolutely mind-boggling that they are allowed to sell phone location data in the first place without any real consent from their customers. That's why it

It's absolutely mind-boggling that they are allowed to sell phone location data in the first place without any real consent from their customers. That's why it must really say something about these companies - Verizon especially - that them voluntarily stopping such a practice makes me imagine they have nefarious motives in mind. Either that, or they just think net neutrality's death is going to be so much more profitable than this that it's not worth the man-hours anymore.

imglorp 8y ago
They're allowed because the customer agrees, right there in the privacy policy. I think this sucks however, because 1. You get hundreds of pages of contract to read about the phone and the service and billing and everything else. Who is going to spend a week doing a doc review to buy a phone? 2. It's opt out. GDPR got this right. Even if you do opt out, how do you know if they handle your PI correctly anyway? They get paid to abuse it and penalized to respect it. 3. And the big one is: there's no alternatives. IF all the carriers do this -- and why should we expect them to leave cash on the table -- then you can't shop by privacy. They're all take it or leave it, as disclosed in their PP. https://www.verizon.com/about/privacy/vz-navigator-app-privacy-policy https://www.verizon.com/about/privacy/vz-navigator-app-priva...
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Note a big thing Verizon pushes now is the Verizon Up rewards program, which is opt-in, and explicitly permits them to sell your data. So they may be folding everything in the monetizing data category into that opt-in program now. Which works fine for me, because I ain't ever opting in to that. And arguably, those who do opt-in are getting something for it. (Rewards.)
- vvanders 8y ago
  It's not just that, they'll happily violate a policy if there's not going to be a huge backlash about it. I remember when Verizon started booting Kyocera 7135 devices off their networks(even on contract) if they were under a "Minutes of use" data plan and offering an "upgrade" to Treos but only if you picked up a $50/mo data plan + renew your contract. The ostensibly did this because the device was "causing compatibility issues", however no other carries with the same device did the same thing. Tons of posts on howardforums but not enough to cause a huge stir. The whole process left such a sour taste in my mouth I'll never own a cell phone on Verizon again.
- pdkl95 8y ago
  > Who is going to spend a week doing a doc review to buy a phone? There are algorithmic methods available for estimating reading time. Taking 80% of that value (or whatever) could then be used as a conservative lower bound for how long someone must take reading a document before it can be reasonably asserted that someone could have "agreed" to anything. If you haven't spent at least some minimum amount of time reading the document, it should be assumed prima facie that a "meeting of the minds"[1] hasn't happened. This would require much longer delays before sales/etc, which encourages companies to use shorter, easier to read legal documents.
krn 8y ago
There is a saying, that if you pay for a service - you are a customer, and if you don't - you are a product. But in the US, it seems, you are a product, either way.
- eslaught 8y ago
  It's standard profit maximization. If you can get a customer to pay $X, and then also sell their data on the side for $Y, then why wouldn't you do it? The thing people don't seem to realize is that it's not just enough to pay money for what you use. You have to pay more than $X + $Y, i.e. you have to explicitly price yourself out of the price bracket of customers who are willing to put up with being the product. This means that services where users are a product are going to continue to be the norm as long as a significant fraction of consumers are willing to put up with it.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    In the case of Verizon and ATT, and other ISPs, it doesn't matter how many are willing to put up with it since there are no other options.
  - Avshalom 8y ago
    You can only explicitly price yourself out if that's an option. If every player in the market sells your data regardless of their price points the only option is to not buy anything at all.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    It's standard profit maximization. If you can get a customer to pay $X, and then also sell their data on the side for $Y, then why wouldn't you do it? Generally, people are prohibited from reselling the things the common items of our existence: electricity, internet service, food, and so on. Businesses have no such restrictions, even though like food, personally-attributable information can be put to harm.
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  The root of the problem of all of this is the Quarterly Earnings Report. Every public company has to show growth every single quarter, otherwise investors will punish them. Therefore they have to do every dirty little thing they can to get money coming in. Get rid of the quarterly reporting and let businesses get back to competing on customer service and you'll see this all go away.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

imglorp 8y ago

They're allowed because the customer agrees, right there in the privacy policy. I think this sucks however, because 1. You get hundreds of pages of contract to read about the phone and the service and billing and everything else. Who is going to spend a week doing a doc review to buy a phone? 2. It's opt out. GDPR got this right. Even if you do opt out, how do you know if they handle your PI correctly anyway? They get paid to abuse it and penalized to respect it. 3. And the big one is: there's no alternatives. IF all the carriers do this -- and why should we expect them to leave cash on the table -- then you can't shop by privacy. They're all take it or leave it, as disclosed in their PP. https://www.verizon.com/about/privacy/vz-navigator-app-privacy-policy https://www.verizon.com/about/privacy/vz-navigator-app-priva...

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Note a big thing Verizon pushes now is the Verizon Up rewards program, which is opt-in, and explicitly permits them to sell your data. So they may be folding everything in the monetizing data category into that opt-in program now. Which works fine for me, because I ain't ever opting in to that. And arguably, those who do opt-in are getting something for it. (Rewards.)
vvanders 8y ago
It's not just that, they'll happily violate a policy if there's not going to be a huge backlash about it. I remember when Verizon started booting Kyocera 7135 devices off their networks(even on contract) if they were under a "Minutes of use" data plan and offering an "upgrade" to Treos but only if you picked up a $50/mo data plan + renew your contract. The ostensibly did this because the device was "causing compatibility issues", however no other carries with the same device did the same thing. Tons of posts on howardforums but not enough to cause a huge stir. The whole process left such a sour taste in my mouth I'll never own a cell phone on Verizon again.
pdkl95 8y ago
> Who is going to spend a week doing a doc review to buy a phone? There are algorithmic methods available for estimating reading time. Taking 80% of that value (or whatever) could then be used as a conservative lower bound for how long someone must take reading a document before it can be reasonably asserted that someone could have "agreed" to anything. If you haven't spent at least some minimum amount of time reading the document, it should be assumed prima facie that a "meeting of the minds"[1] hasn't happened. This would require much longer delays before sales/etc, which encourages companies to use shorter, easier to read legal documents.

krn 8y ago

There is a saying, that if you pay for a service - you are a customer, and if you don't - you are a product. But in the US, it seems, you are a product, either way.

eslaught 8y ago
It's standard profit maximization. If you can get a customer to pay $X, and then also sell their data on the side for $Y, then why wouldn't you do it? The thing people don't seem to realize is that it's not just enough to pay money for what you use. You have to pay more than $X + $Y, i.e. you have to explicitly price yourself out of the price bracket of customers who are willing to put up with being the product. This means that services where users are a product are going to continue to be the norm as long as a significant fraction of consumers are willing to put up with it.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  In the case of Verizon and ATT, and other ISPs, it doesn't matter how many are willing to put up with it since there are no other options.
- Avshalom 8y ago
  You can only explicitly price yourself out if that's an option. If every player in the market sells your data regardless of their price points the only option is to not buy anything at all.
- rhizome 8y ago
  It's standard profit maximization. If you can get a customer to pay $X, and then also sell their data on the side for $Y, then why wouldn't you do it? Generally, people are prohibited from reselling the things the common items of our existence: electricity, internet service, food, and so on. Businesses have no such restrictions, even though like food, personally-attributable information can be put to harm.
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
The root of the problem of all of this is the Quarterly Earnings Report. Every public company has to show growth every single quarter, otherwise investors will punish them. Therefore they have to do every dirty little thing they can to get money coming in. Get rid of the quarterly reporting and let businesses get back to competing on customer service and you'll see this all go away.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]