[HN Gopher] T-Mobile to share customers' data with advertisers u...
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T-Mobile to share customers' data with advertisers unless they opt
out
Author : 34679
Score : 148 points
Date : 2021-03-09 20:19 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thehill.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thehill.com)
| skykooler wrote:
| > "We've heard many say they prefer more relevant ads so we're
| defaulting to this setting," a T-Mobile spokeswoman told the
| paper.
|
| How many?
| tablespoon wrote:
| All the people on the adtech team.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| There must be a whole civilization of ad-loving people, maybe
| they live on Mars, maybe on the dark side of the Moon. The
| only people aware of their existence are Google, FB and co.
| They inundate these companies requesting better and more
| targeted ads. "I'm paying for your services, i want creepier
| ads!" they complain. (Yes, FB has figured out they can charge
| them money)
| sdfhbdf wrote:
| I feel like US is really behind on federal ePrivacy and personal
| data regulations.
|
| Seems like CCPA is a step in the right direction but should be
| implemented on federal level.
| d4rk9 wrote:
| The US main goal is profit. We had already sold the country to
| the highest bidder.
| ProAm wrote:
| > I feel like US is really behind on
|
| ...everything that matters
| cynoclast wrote:
| Everything that matters to the working class*
|
| Our imperialism, weapons tech, and exploitation of the
| working class are top notch. The amount banks take from
| people with no money in overdraft fees alone should be cause
| for a revolution.
| cbhl wrote:
| The US introduced the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act
| back in 1998, and the response for most websites was to put in
| an age gate requiring a birthday where you're at least 13 or
| 14.
|
| I wonder why at the time congress scoped this bill to just
| children, rather than thinking about online privacy for all
| consumers.
| closeparen wrote:
| COPPA is about the fact that 9-year-olds can't meaningfully
| consent to privacy policies. Adults can, and can even do so
| on behalf of their children under COPPA, it's just that most
| sites would rather ban children than deal with parent
| signature forms.
| tracedddd wrote:
| Pathetic that this is even happening. Is there any trustworthy
| cell provider now? I'd switch over this but T-Mobile was the one
| least complicit in NSA spying.
| jb1991 wrote:
| Does this apply to T-mobile service outside the U.S.?
| [deleted]
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| This would bother me a bit but 2 points:
|
| a)i'm not on t-mobile
|
| and b) they've already been hacked, your data is out there
| regardless.
| Arainach wrote:
| At no point has "web and mobile app data" been listed as
| something accessed in any breach.
| [deleted]
| tjohns wrote:
| Does this apply to users on T-Mobile's network via MVNOs, or only
| customers who subscribe directly to T-Mobile?
| mike_d wrote:
| The opt-out applies only to T-Mobile, the data collection
| applies to everything connected to the T-Mobile network.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Seconding - I should call Ting and see.
| dawnerd wrote:
| If Ting is using the T-mobile network then I'd assume
| T-mobile is still selling that data, even if not as granular
| as direct app tracking.
| mbreese wrote:
| Not that this makes it right, but AT&T does something similar.
| And I wouldn't be surprised if Verizon did the same. But it is
| sad when your network provider just decides to sell everything
| they know about you and who you're talking to.
|
| https://www.att.com/legal/terms.enhancedRelevantAdvertising....
|
| And even though they call it opt-in, everyone is automatic
| enrolled in a form of this unless they opt-out.
|
| _> All customers are automatically in the basic Relevant
| Advertising program, but we still give you a choice. You can opt
| out of the Relevant Advertising program at www.att.com
| /cmpchoice._
| ArchOversight wrote:
| > AT&T automatically enrolls wireless subscribers in a basic ad
| program that pools them into groups, and Verizon similarly
| pools subscriber data before sharing with advertisers, the
| Journal reported.
|
| The article even mentions exactly that...
| landstrom wrote:
| From Mac Rumors:
|
| T-Mobile customers can opt out of the advertising program through
| the T-Mobile app or the T-Mobile website. In the app, access the
| "MORE" tab, select Advertising & Analytics, and toggle off "Use
| my data to make ads more relevant to me."
|
| On the website(https://www.t-mobile.com/signin), choose "My
| Account," select "Profile, Privacy, and Notifications, then
| choose Advertising "& Analytics. From there, turn the opt-in
| toggle off. Sprint users can change the setting through the
| Sprint website. Select "Visit My Account," choose "Preferences"
| and then scroll down to "Manage advertising and analytics
| preferences." From here, turn off "Use my data to make ads more
| relevant to me."
|
| Took me a few reloads throughout this process
| Trung0246 wrote:
| Direct link for anyone lazy like me :)
|
| https://www.t-mobile.com/account/profile/line-selector/adver...
| texasbigdata wrote:
| There should, and I realize this is a bit pitchfork-EY, a
| limit on number of clicks to find one of these opt outs.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Agreed. Even with the nicely supplied shortcut URL it was
| still 16 clicks for me to turn everything off for 4 lines.
| dnr wrote:
| Thanks for that! I tried logging in and navigating to the
| page, but kept getting errors at the "Privacy &
| Notifications" page (maybe because I'm on an old pre-paid
| plan?). That direct link worked fine, though. (Though who
| knows if it will actually take effect, or mysteriously lose
| my preferences.)
| xyst wrote:
| I have had these off for a couple of years now since it was
| talked about on a non-official subreddit for tmobile.
|
| They better not re-enable it in April.
|
| EDIT: I just checked again, those fuckers re-enabled it on my
| account
| neon_electro wrote:
| This setting is per-line as well; I had several lines to opt
| out.
| tzs wrote:
| It doesn't seem to work for prepaid T-Mobile customers.
|
| The menus at prepaid.t-mobile.com are slightly different, and
| don't seem to have the necessary options.
|
| Prepaid customers definitely seem to be second class customers
| at T-Mobile.
|
| First, the T-Mobile app doesn't work for us. It says "Sorry
| we're not ready for you yet. We're working on improving your
| app experience" and tells you to use the website. It's been
| doing that for several years now.
|
| Second, they don't support paying with Apple pay.
|
| And now, it looks like we don't get the same privacy options
| that postpaid customers get.
|
| I don't understand why they have this separation.
| hbcondo714 wrote:
| Yup, it's not just you. I've been receiving that same sorry
| message in the app ever since I switched from T-Mobile
| regular to T-Mobile prepaid last year.
|
| During the switch, I had to provide all my information all
| over again even though I was with T-Mobile for many years.
| The customer service rep said it's because they are "two
| different systems".
| neltnerb wrote:
| I am prepaid and was able to get these to work.
|
| https://my.t-mobile.com/account/profile/privacy_notification.
| ..
|
| https://www.t-mobile.com/content/t-mobile/corporate/privacy-.
| ..
| neltnerb wrote:
| There are actually two direct links.
|
| I am prepaid and was able to visit the links directly to bypass
| their decision to break the website for us for no technological
| reason.
|
| This one should redirect you to the right page after you log in
| to turn off two of the "features".
|
| https://my.t-mobile.com/account/profile/privacy_notification...
|
| But "for some reason" there is an entirely separate page for
| "Do Not Sell my Personal Information".
|
| https://www.t-mobile.com/content/t-mobile/corporate/privacy-...
|
| I can confirm that despite being a T-mobile customer
| continuously for 10 years and definitely repeatedly turning
| this nonsense off that it was all back on (and do-not-sell was
| turned back off, I assume "on" means "do not sell" but
| obviously it's an intentionally deceptive pattern).
|
| Combined with their decision to force prepaid customers to
| suddenly call them every stupid time that you want to check
| anything or change anything when before it worked perfectly
| fine on their website... I'm thinking T-Mobile is getting
| Sprintified and am very sad that it really doesn't seem likely
| that I'll be able to keep using them. I used to think they were
| the best, back when they were trying...
| sneak wrote:
| Guess it's time to opt out of T-Mobile entirely. Bummer,
| switching is pure overhead. :/
|
| These days I use a Fi data-only SIM in a battery-powered travel
| router that runs a VPN, and only ever use my mobile devices via
| Wi-Fi to that, anyway. I use throwaway gmail accounts with Google
| Voice for stuff that still insists on PSTN phone numbers.
|
| I kept my T-Mo SIM with my decade-old phone number (in a $19
| dumbphone, no less!) but it might be time to abandon that now.
| websites2323 wrote:
| Which router do you use? I've been considering this solution
| for a while. It seems inconvenient, but I might get used to it
| to avoid this fuckery.
| nikisweeting wrote:
| Their privacy policy on iOS is also blatantly misleading. They
| claim to not collect any identity-linked location info, and also
| claim that your purchases are somehow not tied to your identity,
| both of which are demonstrably false.
|
| https://twitter.com/thesquashSH/status/1369089325040828421
| tablespoon wrote:
| John Legere, who was responsible for T-Mobile's norm-shattering
| "uncarrier" direction, resigned last year after the Sprint merger
| went through.
|
| Now that T-Mobile isn't a scrappy underdog anymore, I think we
| can expect more American business-as-usual customer exploitation
| from them.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Yeah, they were amazing... ten years ago when I started using
| them. Now they block my wifi calling for no technological
| reason, opt me in to invasive monitoring, sell my information,
| force me to call them to change anything about my account
| because they broke their own previously working website to make
| being pepaid harder...
|
| getting really hard to justify sticking around.
| sircastor wrote:
| I really liked Legere as a CEO. I think he did more to advance
| consumer benefits in the telco industry than anyone else in the
| last 10 years. His efforts made Verizon and AT&T have to move,
| at least a little from their cushy duopoly position
| trimbo wrote:
| I was a customer of theirs for years and he would respond on
| Twitter to random customers (me included, a couple times).
| Seemed like a really great leader.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| John is also a great CEO keynote speaker (kind of like jobs).
| Watch his uncarrier keynotes on youtube if you're interested.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| Opt out should be illegal. It's never in the users favor.
| myrandomcomment wrote:
| So to turn this off log into your account in a browser.
|
| Account on the main bar > Profile and Settings > Privacy and
| Notifications > Advertising & Analytics > then click on each line
| and turn it off. reply
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| Doesn't the CCPA protect customers in California from having
| their browsing data used for ad targeting without an explicit
| opt-in?
|
| edit: to answer my own question, no it does not. I'm thinking of
| GDPR.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Whoops. Easy mistake to make if you know how to expand CCPA.
| Well, nothing to do here I guess. We'll need to let the market
| figure this out I guess. ` _shrug`_
|
| ... /s
| swiley wrote:
| Yikes I'd dump T-mobile if I had it... I wonder if I'm too late
| for puts.
| jonpurdy wrote:
| This sort of thing drives me crazy. It's so pervasive that it's
| impossible for users to keep up with opting out of everything.
|
| All one can really do is treat corporations adversarially and
| assume the worst. It's crazy that I need to run a VPN from my
| home since my own ISP would use deep packet inspection (aside
| from logging DNS entries) to profile my household for advertising
| purposes.
|
| Recommendations: - Mullvad: they take cryptocurrency, account ID
| is a randomly generated number that can't be recovered, no
| logging, support Wireguard, reasonably fast, works well on mobile
| - Cloudflare WARP: centralized corp but they don't sell customer
| data and aren't incentivized to do so (disclaimer: for now),
| really damn fast since you're probably hitting Cloudflare sites
| from your ISP anyway, they use Wireguard (but in a custom setup),
| works really well on mobile
| compiler-guy wrote:
| "We've heard many say they prefer more relevant ads so we're
| defaulting to this setting,"
|
| To the extent that anyone wants ads, of course they want more
| relevant ads. It's a truism.
|
| But that doesn't mean that they want to trade their privacy for
| such things. And this is T-mobile's duplicity.
| xyst wrote:
| t-mobile has been using this as their default option for some
| time now (more than a year?). I recall seeing a post on
| /r/tmobile talking about it - I'll see if I can dig it up
|
| EDIT: more than 2 years ago!
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/ahio9n/tmobile_dat...
| heroprotagonist wrote:
| I definitely opted out of this already. I even contacted their
| support about concerns over the way they sell location data
| upon opt-in (hint: their opt-in requirement for sharing your
| location was completely up to the location aggregator and the
| end customer buying location data to enforce. eg, not enforced
| at all).
|
| The main point I made was that this was not able to be opted
| out of via their preferences, and that having opted out of all
| possibilities, my cell number was still revealing location data
| when entered into one of those aggregation services.
|
| They had me snail mail a letter to a PO box. I never got a
| reply.
|
| Yet today _all_ of their privacy settings have been reset to
| opt-in status. And I still can't stop them from giving my
| location to anyone who tells their API "Yes, I have his
| permission".
| cwkoss wrote:
| Anyone have a link where I can opt out?
| ilamont wrote:
| Just attempted to change settings via "Advertising & Analytics"
| on the mobile app.
|
| Error: "Looks like we got our wires crossed"
| room505 wrote:
| From https://www.t-mobile.com/privacy-center/our-
| practices/privac...
|
| https://www.t-mobile.com/content/t-mobile/corporate/privacy-...
|
| https://t-mobile.static.services.wirewheel.io/
|
| https://www.t-mobile.com/dns?brand=Magenta&site=Sell_App&ori...
| sdfhbdf wrote:
| Here's the "Do not sell my data" form:
|
| https://www.t-mobile.com/content/t-mobile/corporate/privacy-...
|
| There is more opt-out links with different degree of opt-out on
| the top of the privacy policy:
|
| https://www.t-mobile.com/privacy-center/our-practices/privac...
| techsupporter wrote:
| What really frustrates me is I had already turned off all of the
| "personalized advertising" toggles I could find prior to this.
| But I log in to turn these off and the ones I'd touched before
| were _back on_.
|
| Increasingly, the "if you're not paying then you're the product"
| saying is bunk. I _am paying_ , almost $400 per month, for quite
| a few SIMs to be active on T-Mobile's network yet that's not
| enough. They have to harvest data about me for even more.
|
| (Don't come at me with the "a company is legally required to take
| in all of the money it possibly can for its shareholders" bit.
| Nothing says a company can't make a reasonable business decision
| to leave money on the table.)
| tmaly wrote:
| I can confirm this, I had already opt-ed out before. It appears
| they have reset my choice. What a way to build trust with your
| customers.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Increasingly, the "if you're not paying then you're the
| product" saying is bunk. I am paying, almost $400 per month,
| for quite a few SIMs to be active on T-Mobile's network yet
| that's not enough. They have to harvest data about me for even
| more.
|
| I think the corrected slogan would be:
|
| If you're not paying, you're _certainly_ the product. If you
| are paying, you still _might_ be.
| amelius wrote:
| The slogan is correct. But your version is probably easier to
| interpret correctly by most people.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Every single one of my credit/debit cards has an annual privacy
| notice. Every time I sign up for a card I call the line and
| opt-out of the sharing that they are required to let me opt-out
| of. The setting is retained and while the notices get sent
| every year, I don't have to opt-out again. Where was the notice
| even sent for this? Was there one? When I initially saw this
| reporting I figured 'Ah, they are expanding sales for earlier
| opted-in customers, better remind others to opt out that care
| about this'
|
| I share your anger.
| xyst wrote:
| same here - I had to disable them again.
|
| The last time I checked this was ~2 years ago when it was
| brought up in another forum (reddit:/r/tmobile).
|
| So I am curious how long my lines have been sending data to
| tmobile's data warehouse
| rightbyte wrote:
| Are you in the EU? It sounds illegal.
|
| EDIT: Oh I didn't know T-Mobile was active in the US too.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| I'm with Tele2 NL (which is just a sub-brand of T-Mobile NL)
| for my phone service, and I do believe the following settings
| were on before I turned them off:
|
| - Receive advertisements from Tele2
|
| - Receive advertisements from third parties
|
| - Personal advice [based on my usage data]
|
| - Relevant content [ads based on my personal data]
|
| - Usage of location data [to send me ads]
|
| - Usage of my data for market research purposes
| fpgaminer wrote:
| > Increasingly, the "if you're not paying then you're the
| product" saying is bunk
|
| It was always bunk, even for free services. Just because a
| company offers something for free doesn't mean they should get
| a free pass to abuse users.
|
| It's in this weird corporate apologetic vein where people try
| to find ways to blame users for a company's wrong doings.
|
| But here we are. We collectively said it's cool to do if the
| product is free. And that shifted the privacy overton window.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Keep track of this, this is amazing data for a nice class
| action lawsuit.
| acdha wrote:
| I just confirmed the same thing: all of my lines had silently
| been reset to sharing data with advertisers.
| idatum wrote:
| I noticed the same thing: I opted out (both analytics and ads
| options) a few months ago when I switched to T-Mobile. They
| since ignored my preferences and opted me back in.
| Unbelievable. I don't even know when they did this.
|
| Do I now have to keep checking on these settings??
|
| Changing privacy preferences without my knowledge or permission
| must be made _illegal_. Total FB like move.
|
| Also, I'm generally tired of this concept of "ads relevant to
| me" BS.
| SllX wrote:
| Except Facebook had respected every single privacy toggle I
| ever set when I had my account.
|
| I looked this morning expecting to find an additional toggle
| and found several settings I thought were toggled off were
| toggled on. I was thinking this was an oversight on my part
| until I saw this thread, but now I'm not so sure.
| luplex wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Facebook is really careful around this
| stuff. it's illegal for them to ignore your previously made
| privacy choices. Facebook can't afford to break the law in
| such an obvious way.
| SllX wrote:
| No, I'm going to give them full kudos here, not the
| cynical "they have to be careful because reasons" type of
| kudos, but the full-bodied rich in flavor type of kudos.
| I created my account in 2007 and would regularly check
| the privacy settings every time they made a change of any
| kind up to the point I stopped using and later removed
| the account over a decade later.
|
| Not one privacy setting that I exerted manual control
| over ever changed out from under me. Whatever
| controversies they came under in that time with all the
| additional accompanying scrutiny, this aspect never
| changed. Perhaps there are counter examples out there,
| but that's how it was for me.
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