Verizon Wireless To Sell Customers' Data To Advertisers

snoopy · Oct 19, 2011

Verizon Wireless to Sell Customers' Data to Advertisers
Oct 18, 2011 | 12:13 PM ET | By Matt Liebowitz

Verizon Wireless will now collect phone users' information, including their GPS location and Web browsing history, and sell the data to third parties unless customers opt out of the tracking service. Verizon Wireless' (VZW) updated privacy policy permits the mobile giant to also track customers' app usage, device type, calling features and amount of phone use, as well as any search terms they type when browsing the Web on a VZW mobile device, and demographic information provided by other companies, such as gender and age.

The goal of logging this info and handing it over to other companies, VZW writes, is to create business and marketing reports. VZW gives the example that the data it mines and sells to marketers, "could be combined with data provided by other wireless carriers to create a report on the number of mobile users who take a particular highway during rush hour."

Facebook sells customer data to users, and Google collects location data for traffic purposes, but those services are free to use. In contrast, Verizon Wireless customers are already paying the U.S. cellular industry's highest rates, and now the company will be making even more from each user.

This is alarming to Chester Wisniewski, senior security advisor for the security firm Sophos. "You should be concerned if you value your privacy and feel your $80 contract should be enough that your provider should not feel compelled to sell you to someone for marketing purposes," he wrote in an email to SecurityNewsDaily.
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