13 ms·
AT&T says it’ll stop selling location data amid calls for federal investigation
- bitxbitxbitcoin 8y agoIt's horrible that it has taken this much time get them to take action against their bottom line.
- toufiqbarhamov 8y agoI don’t believe them, and I’m no longer interested in giving the industry more chances. ISP’s need regulation, nothing else will stick for long.
- criddell 8y agoI think it's nuts that your video rental records are better protected than your phone records and ISP records. Maybe a future administration will rebuild the anti trust departments and they will start to break apart companies like Facebook, Alphabet, and Verizon.
- xoa 8y ago>companies like Facebook, Alphabet, and Verizon It may well be worth applying far stronger anti-trust to all of those, but I still think it's a mistake to lump together some companies that are merely big and have network effects with a company that has both government granted and natural monopolies on limited physical infrastructure. Given the massive backlash in just the last year against Facebook, and competitors growing vs Alphabet, it is at least arguable that it's too early for drastic steps before seeing what happens. There have been other big tech players that nevertheless got displaced over a decade or two (Xerox, IBM say). And even if they do need remedies, those may well be different remedies then what would be appropriate for Verizon (GDPR-style for example, transparency and control for people over data). There is in fact only so much available usable EM spectrum, or rights of way for cables. It's a different class of problem with different solutions and tradeoffs. I just worry that if you lump too disparate things together it'll become an easy defense for the worst of them, and we'll end up with a situation where the likes of Verizon or Comcast or AT&T or whomever refer to themselves as part of the "Google/Facebook" group and then point to Bing and claim anti-trust is overblown. Also, reducing the most end point monopolies could have ripple effects up the stack, if everyone had content neutral symmetric WAN links closer to LAN speeds again it could significant aid decentralization, at least for the initial growth stages.
- anderskaseorg 8y agoA network effect _is_ a kind of monopoly, and this monopoly power can be abused like any other. It’s harder to compete with Facebook than it would be in an idealized free market because there are only so many different platforms a user will be willing to use to keep in touch with their friends. This fact alone doesn’t automatically make Facebook evil, but does mean it deserves an appropriate level of scrutiny and regulatory oversight like companies with other kinds of monopoly power, even if the details differ.
- Atheros 8y agoYou're describing a "common carrier". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier#Telecommunications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier#Telecommunicati...
- mtgx 8y agoThe FTC staff had already recommended antitrust action against Google over its abuses back in 2012 but Obama killed the investigation to save them. Google was smaller back then and it was also before the EU had 3 antitrust cases against it. I fail to see how Alphabet is in a better position now. And Facebook should have never been allowed to buy WhatsApp and Instagram. It was already big enough at the time.
- criddell 8y agoMerely big is a problem all by itself, IMHO. That's more a side effect of the lack of regulations around political spending by corporations but it's still a problem. Aside from political influence, any company that's too big to fail is probably just too big.
- jogjayr 8y agoIt's much easier to change your search engine than your ISP.
- rjf72 8y agoIndeed but when you change your ISP you are generally completely disconnected from them. Changing your search engine is just the first in a lengthy series of steps required to separate yourself from Google's data harvesting capabilities. This is why it's reasonable to declare them a monopoly. Taking just Google Analytics as an example. A quick search [1] indicated that, as of 2015, around 6,950 of the top 10,000 sites by traffic use it, with 546,000 of the top million using it. I'd expect those numbers have only increased. And their analytics service is just one branch of their extremely long reach outside of their search engine. You can get away from Google search, but getting away from Google is an entirely different issue. [1] - https://marketingland.com/as-google-analytics-turns-10-we-ask-how-many-websites-use-it-151892 https://marketingland.com/as-google-analytics-turns-10-we-as...
- cosmie 8y agoAnd those are just the ones that make it explicit. It's also pretty easy to mask usage of GA via a reverse proxy[1], or indirectly use GA via services such as Segment[2]. While both do create a degree of separation between your device and Google's servers, it still underscores your point of getting away from Google entirely being far more difficult than just avoiding Search. [1] https://medium.freecodecamp.org/save-your-analytics-from-content-blockers-7ee08c6ec7ee https://medium.freecodecamp.org/save-your-analytics-from-con... [2] https://segment.com/ https://segment.com/
- mtgx 8y agoIt's easier to change your ISP - even in the US - than it is for your data not to land in Google's or Facebook possession somehow whether it's through web site tracking, its own services, or partnerships with hardware manufacturers and other data companies.
- paulie_a 8y ago
- 50656E6973 8y ago>Maybe a future administration will rebuild the anti trust departments and they will start to break apart companies like Facebook, Alphabet, and Verizon. Zuckerberg 2020
- pessimizer 8y ago> I think it's nuts that your video rental records are better protected than your phone records and ISP records. Librarians have shared ethical standards, and concern for people other than themselves. Engineers don't. The closest they get are safety standards. So things that overlap with what librarians do have had constant pushback on privacy protection issues.
- JadeNB 8y ago> Librarians have shared ethical standards, and concern for people other than themselves. Engineers don't. The closest they get are safety standards. I think at least this needs to say "the engineering profession" or whatever (as opposed to just "engineers"). While engineer's disease is very real, saying that engineers don't have concern for others seems an overreach.
- delfinom 8y agoHow the hell do you break up Facebook? Make it worthless and unusable by forcing it to be regional?
- criddell 8y agoA good start would be to spin off Instagram, Whatsapp, and other big acquisitions into separate companies. Those purchases probably shouldn't have been allowed in the first place.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoThis is a question everyone should propose to their representatives if anything is to be done about data privacy in the US.
- criddell 8y agoI think the video rental privacy law came into being because of the rental records of a politician were leaked and he had been watching [clutches pearls] porn.
- dev_dull 8y agoDon’t you see yet? It’s regulation that’s giving ISPs so much power.
- moate 8y agoI'll bite: what's your solution then? How will deregulating the market allow more ISPs to pop up and become competitive?
- bdz 8y agoNarrator: "They don't"
- ceejayoz 8y agoDidn't they all promise this the last time they got caught selling this data?
- wmf 8y ago"AT&T also said at the time it would be maintaining those of its agreements that provided clear consumer benefits, such as location sharing for roadside assistance services."
- saagarjha 8y agoIn the near future: “AT&T said in a statement today that they stand by the views they expressed earlier regarding location sharing, saying that ‘matching customers with ads is clearly in their best interests’.”
- whatshisface 8y ago"Selling the names and locations of all people at all times allows us to charge less for phone plans, and so is in the clear interests of the consumer."
- wmf 8y agoSadly, Vizio made exactly this argument the other day about their TVs.
- tyfon 8y agoThe counter argument is obvious (but hated by marketing department). If people loves their adds so much, just let them opt-in. It should almost bring the server down from people pressing the "give me adds" button if you are to believe how much people wants this :)
- Tsubasachan 8y agoI pay €35 per month for true unlimited 4G data. Looking at what T-mobile offers in America I am not impressed with their phone plan.
- TACIXAT 8y agoWow, exactly like last time.
- sitkack 8y agoWe can know where the board of AT&T resides when they are in jail.
- dawnerd 8y agoT-Mobile just did the same. I think what you'll see instead is the phone companies selling the data directly instead of through a 3rd party broker. In response to them claiming there's legitimate uses.. there's really not. If someone needs roadside assistance you can ask if they can get your location or require the caller to have a carrier app installed that requests location data.
- spsrich 8y agoThat's hilarious. What's the difference between AT&T and the federal government ?
- kyboren 8y agoJust like 6 months ago. I won't bother typing up my thoughts again and instead just copy/paste what I wrote before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17416804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17416804 > You should seriously consider [not carrying a cell phone] once more. > > These carriers will use the narrowest possible interpretation of their statements. Historical > location data appears to be fair game, and perhaps they'll just launch their own competing > service so they aren't providing anything to a third party. These carriers all constantly > record your location data and see it as another potential source of revenue. The law (in the > US) does not prevent them from trading it, sharing it, selling it, targeting advertising > using it, etc. > > They got caught with their hands in the cookie jar this time and are pretending to be really > sorry about it so that the law stays that way, and they can go back to stealing cookies once > this all dies down a bit. Don't for a second think that this means your location data will > not be used against you in order for the carrier to make a quick buck.
- A2017U1 8y agoWhat about simply not using a sim? Depends on circumstance but I can survive just fine without one in many cities. At home I have the wifi from so many restaurants/bars that even on the move I usually get a connection.
- kyboren 8y agoI'm not sure how much that helps. That should prevent carriers from being told/trivially discovering your phone number, but your cell radio might still broadcast with your IMEI, which is at least as uniquely identifying. The best is not to have a cellular radio, or to disable physically your phone's radio (e.g. as the Librem 5 will be designed to do). If that's too difficult or involved, soft disable the radio ('airplane mode'). That, however, requires you to trust the software really does keep the radio off.
- A2017U1 8y agoFair point, tempted to go down this rabbit hole with a SDR. You'd assume airplane mode should completely disable it simply for airline regulation reasons, but can't say for certain, and some manufacturers perhaps dont care. Xaiomi and Huawei come to mind.
- ianmf 8y agoI wouldn’t be surprised if this turns into a feature with a price attached. AT&T location privacy add on. $5.
- keepper 8y agoSo many people up in arms about Facebook. When the reality is that both cell phone providers and ISP's ACTUALLY sell your data. Both location data and DNS query logs. But sure, let's focus on the "social media boogie man".
- huntermeyer 8y agoWhile I agree with you in part, social media isn't a "boogie man". Their data brokering behavior is harmful. ISPs data brokering behavior is harmful. Both things can be true.
- keepper 8y agoDefine data brokering. Only Targeting isn’t brokering. Being naive and opening an app platform that allows users to give some information isn’t brokering. Selling bundles of PII without the users knowledge from quasi legal sources to companies and government agencies in digestible form is. There are actual data brokers in the advertising industry. Seedy companies who with a tracking pixel ( or just outright data dumps ) can give you actual PII data. Facebook ( and to and extend google, althought an insane amount of malware goes thru google ads,I’m sure you’ve gotten the “you’ve won redirects”), have been putting those companies out of business. Both Facebook and google have a ton of flaws. Facebook has been super naive on some areas. But Most of the reporting on their “data issues”, have not remotely offered a real view of the industry, or what actually happened.
- mtgx 8y agoFacebook may have not "sold" the data but they were "sharing" it with other companies like Huawei, Acxiom, etc. I don't see how that's any better. They were giving it in exchange for other data or favor instead of monetary compensation.
- rock_hard 8y agoNope they were not! It was the other way around! You were able to use Acxiom/etc data to target people on Facebook
- eximius 8y agoFor how long?
- paavoova 8y agoAnd people literally call me crazy for not carrying a phone around 24/7.
- rambojazz 8y agoIs there a mirror of this article somewhere? Something that is not paywalled?
- nabnob 8y agohttps://outline.com/6p5YjC https://outline.com/6p5YjC
- raldi 8y agoSix months ago: "Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile stop sharing real-time cell phone location data" https://www.zdnet.com/article/senator-rebukes-carriers-sharing-real-time-location-data/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/senator-rebukes-carriers-shari... But this time they mean it.
- mmrezaie 8y agoThis is the same story in Sweden too. For a short period, I was part of the team, and we were being asked to see how we can answer some questions with the information for something around 10k peoples information in Spain and Portugal. The way they just handed us the data and their explanation of why this is not going to bite us back made me sick and I just left right away. But the mentality of how to use these data in the business should be taught to mainstream marketers. Obfuscation of these data to not pinpoint a single person is not something that is as robust as people may think. I can easily find myself in our neighborhood since I know some key points about myself!
- retSava 8y agoYeah, it's been shown time and time again how much de-anonymization can be done on thought-to-be-anonymous data.
- kolbe 8y agoStatements like these should be contractually binding. It's far more effective communication than their actual contracts. And given that the only point of a contract is to solidify an agreement that two parties are knowledgeable of, it would seem that all public statements should be considered a part of said contract.
- hguhghuff 8y ago“Large company stops obviously inhumane/immoral behavior following gigantic uproar from hundreds of thousands of people after being caught red handed following years of secret misbehavior. Company Genuinely surprised, defends its actions, reluctant to stop profitable activity, but willing to do so given direct threat of action from government notoriously unwilling to stop companies doing anything.” Just substitute in company name and alleged misbehavior and repeat over and over.
- netcan 8y agoUltimately... when it comes to a big enough company, these decisions get squirrelly from the perspective of a moderate politician. Take VW's emsissions test cheating. They broke the law, blatantly, intentionally, for 6 years that we know of, with substantial financial and competitive gains. In Europe (most consequences were in the US), this is even more aggregious, imo. European emissions standards, vehicle taxation and such are often designed to give locals (esp VW) an advantage in the market. VW wrote a lot of the rules they broke themselves, practically. Anyway... Back to the moderate "jobs and harmony" politician. Handing out a genuinely sufficient (enough so that crime doesn't pay, even if you only get caught every 2nd time) penalty would endanger the solvency of the (limited liability) company. That's not good for jobs. Genuinely pursuing criminal charges against execs is something every major company, bank and such cries "disaster" over. It's kind of a "too big to fail" problem. Does Germany/EU care more about fairness and rule of law or about the success of the biggest German company?
- magicnubs 8y agoMonopsonies can be as bad as or worse than monopolies.
- tyfon 8y agoIn Europe, many of the VWs execs are prosecuted over this. In the US the exec got 7 years in jail if I remember correctly. The company itself was fined €1 billion (not enough imho) in Germany. So this actually happens, and I agree that execs should be personally liable for damage that is done to others/the environment as result of their decisions.
- a-dub 8y agowe need laws. with teeth.
- mdpopescu 8y agoLaws are usually backed by guns, but your idea might work too.
- joejerryronnie 8y agoI don’t like the idea of my data being harvested and passed around the internet. And somebody selling my location data seems super creepy. But what exactly is this data used for? Targeted advertising? Is that it?
- spinach 8y agoIt's interesting that even companies that have a clear paid service do this too. Companies like Google, Facebook and all sorts of free apps, rely on their shady back-end manipulation/ads because their service is free, but that even companies who actually have a product are doing these sorts of shady things as well makes one wonder if there is a future where the web isn't so antagonistic to the users.
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoEvery time things like this happen, the bar for what is acceptable gets lowered. It's only going to get worse.
- acdha 8y agoWe need something like the GDPR in the United States. Otherwise there’s always going to be someone sleazy offering money which most managers won’t turn down — the check makes their numbers better right now and it’ll be a long time if ever before someone notices.
- ptyyy 8y agoAs much as I would love to have the protections offered by GDPR, I doubt it would even make it past a committee vote. Telecom/technology lobbyists would exert maximum pressure on legislators in order the proposal to die. There's far too much money to be made in trafficking user data.
- acdha 8y agoI don’t disagree that it’ll be hard but I think there’s more awareness of the problem and rejection of “regulation is bad” propaganda than I can remember seeing before. I won’t be surprised if something happens at the state level, especially outside California.
- izendejas 8y agoCalifornia recently passed legislation that will kick in Jan 1, 2020: https://www.caprivacy.org/ https://www.caprivacy.org/ The CCPA explicitly prohibits the re-sale of personal data, so it will at least impact the demand from data resellers of the location data in question, for example -- in theory, anyway. It also gives consumers the right to request their personal data be deleted. It's, however, unclear how this would impact location data telcos are selling. As other states begin to consider their own legislation, many are pushing for federal legislation that supersedes state laws, for obvious reasons. That will be worth keeping an eye on.
- forgotAgain 8y agoPR trying to recover from the fake 5G fiasco.
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoOh, they doubled down on that lie. The CEO fully supports lying to their customers.
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoGreat. But, of course, there'll be a new service fee to offset the lost revenue.
- En_gr_Student 8y agoThey are lying. The only winning strategy is if the FBI does investigate, and if there is an actual penalty. Nothing less will impact the long term behavior of AT&T or any other cell company. Seriously, it is game theory. They are saying "we will stop" because of the presence of the threat. If the threat goes away, then they are going to keep making money/selling you until the threat comes back. Like the boy crying wolf, the villagers (fbi) takes longer to build momentum for the second event than for the first. The organization is the least common denominator, so its moral capacity is the worst of a 5 year old child. Like raising/disciplining a child, the only way to change their negative behavior is to add an expected penalty to the behavior that is larger than the expected gain, so the risk-reward evaluation they make says "don't do it".
- wilkystyle 8y agoI'm not sure even a penalty will be enough, given how most of them end up being a slap on the wrist that is easily affordable.
- jonhohle 8y agoMy hope would be that even if the slap is laughably small for the current offense, the thread of larger fines for continued action would be a deterrent to keep going. My limited experience with legal issues at large companies is that once a precedent has been set for legally risky behavior, the organization becomes extremely averse to approaching that behavior again (due to optics, legal complications, etc.). AT&T doesn't strike me as a company that cares all that much about the optics from citizen customers (as opposed to business customers), but being found to be a serial violator, i would hope, would have larger consequence.
- bradknowles 8y agoThis is why corporate fines should be based on percentages of global gross revenues, with minimums and no caps. If your company might get fined and lose 5% of their global gross revenue for being a repeat offender, that’s likely to be a much stronger incentive. Especially if those fines double in percentage for every repetition of the infraction.
- thrillgore 8y ago"for now." The moment the heat is off, they'll go back to doing it. The only way to stop it is with legislation.
- danepowell 8y agoAre there any cell providers out there that don't do this kind of shady stuff? It's unfortunate that this seems like another market failure, where consumers have no real choice and the only solution will be punishment/legislation.
- woodrowbarlow 8y agoalso, would using a MVNO carrier prevent the tier-one carrier from having access to location data? either technically or legally? i.e. is it even possible for an MVNO to position themselves as "the carrier that doesn't do this kind of shady stuff"?
- woodrowbarlow 8y agolooks like this article answers both questions: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d3bnyv/google-demanded-tmobile-sprint-to-not-sell-google-fi-customers-location-data https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d3bnyv/google-dem... MVNOs can't really provide any protection. Google is "demanding" that their tier-one carriers don't sell their MVNO customers' data, but just by throwing their weight around. i doubt they'll continue after this blows over, and other MVNOs don't have that kind of weight. which means every single mobile customer in the US has to choose the least shady infrastructure owner -- between ATT, Sprint, TMobile, or Verizon. those are literally the only four options in terms of which company you want to trust with a never-ending stream of your personal location data. and if you use an MVNO, chances are good that _more than one_ of these companies has access to your data.
- superkuh 8y agoEven if they follow through and stick with it this doesn't meant they will stop collecting and storing the data. All US mobile telcos store location information for 2 to 5 years and that data is available on the drop of a hat for any federal government agency that wishes to have it. As actual 5G multiple-in multiple-out antenna beamforming arrays and micro/nano/etc cells become more common the location data will be much more fine grained as well. The problem here is not the commercial providers selling it to 3rd parties. The problem is them storing it for year and years. If it's there it will be used.
- rmrfrmrf 8y agoWe desperately need to nationalize telecoms.
- djohnston 8y agoCNN hasn't published anything on this and they are owned by AT&T. am i being a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist? it seems like lots of major outlets have discussed it, including their major competitor fox news.
- Yhippa 8y agoAre there carriers that do _not_ sell your location data?
- woodandsteel 8y agoI could be wrong, but I strongly suspect that when they say they are going to stop selling the data, what they mean is that they are going to switch over to some indirect means that is technically not selling, but accomplishes the same ends.