How is this even legal? Also a PSA for all.

[MrSquished]

I'm pretty sure in Europe they make shit like this illegal. From banning advertising to little kids to better privacy laws, why don't we get it here?

Verizon might be collecting your browsing history and here’s how to stop it

It’s time to toggle these settings off.

www.theverge.com

"The My Verizon app might be collecting information about your browsing history, location, apps, and your contacts, all in the name of helping the company “understand your interests,” first spotted by Input. The program, which Verizon appears to automatically opt customers into, is called Verizon Custom Experience and lays buried in the privacy settings on the app....

....In April, T-Mobile started automatically enrolling users in a program that shares your data with advertisers unless you manually opt-out from your privacy settings. On AT&T’s privacy center, the company says that it collects web and browsing information, along with the apps you use, and that you can manage these settings from AT&T’s site. "

Crazy

 

[thilanliyan]

Why do you hate capitalism?

 

[UNCjigga]

This is why you never buy a phone directly from your carrier. Especially not any Android phone.

My personal belief is that Apple devices tend to fare better in the privacy department, primarily because they never preload any carrier BS. I downloaded the 'My Verizon' app mainly for the monthly freebies, and AFAIK they don't have permission to access any browsing history from Safari or Chrome. But if I no longer feel comfortable, I can just remove the app.

 

[hal2kilo]

I'm pretty sure in Europe they make shit like this illegal. From banning advertising to little kids to better privacy laws, why don't we get it here?

Verizon might be collecting your browsing history and here’s how to stop it

It’s time to toggle these settings off.

www.theverge.com

"The My Verizon app might be collecting information about your browsing history, location, apps, and your contacts, all in the name of helping the company “understand your interests,” first spotted by Input. The program, which Verizon appears to automatically opt customers into, is called Verizon Custom Experience and lays buried in the privacy settings on the app....

....In April, T-Mobile started automatically enrolling users in a program that shares your data with advertisers unless you manually opt-out from your privacy settings. On AT&T’s privacy center, the company says that it collects web and browsing information, along with the apps you use, and that you can manage these settings from AT&T’s site. "

Crazy

Get a clue. This is almost universal. That's all Edge talks about, improving user experience is another term for, you think we were collecting data before, you ain't seen nothing yet.

 

[MrSquished]

This is why you never buy a phone directly from your carrier. Especially not any Android phone.

My personal belief is that Apple devices tend to fare better in the privacy department, primarily because they never preload any carrier BS. I downloaded the 'My Verizon' app mainly for the monthly freebies, and AFAIK they don't have permission to access any browsing history from Safari or Chrome. But if I no longer feel comfortable, I can just remove the app.

The Google Pixels do not come with any bloatware on them. Also I know Samsung has made it easier to uninstall pre-installed apps, but not sure what can't be uninstalled, if anything important.

Also I get a new phone often so I like to finance them in monthly payments with zero interest. Which I can do through Google, but with Verizon there is sometimes a disconnect, so I go through the carrier. Either way, they are bloatware free.

Since I always get Google Pixels, I never get bloatware. My Pixels from AT&T never had any bloatware either. I like My Verizon because it's easy to manage my account and get freebies as you said. But I can uninstall it anytime. That is certainly not unique to Apple at all.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

This is why you never buy a phone directly from your carrier. Especially not any Android phone.

My personal belief is that Apple devices tend to fare better in the privacy department, primarily because they never preload any carrier BS. I downloaded the 'My Verizon' app mainly for the monthly freebies, and AFAIK they don't have permission to access any browsing history from Safari or Chrome. But if I no longer feel comfortable, I can just remove the app.

This and that is why I stick with apple.
The way I look at it:
Apple effectively is a hardware company. Most of their revenue comes from phone hardware or laptop hardware then tablets & desktops. Yes they get some data from their browsers, yes they have other revenue streams however Apple isn’t going to screw up their #1 revenue stream.
Google is an ad company that happens to sell some hardware like pixels and smart things and nest thermostats. The lions share of revenue comes from web advertising/collecting data.

 

[MrSquished]

This and that is why I stick with apple.
The way I look at it:
Apple effectively is a hardware company. Most of their revenue comes from phone hardware or laptop hardware then tablets & desktops. Yes they get some data from their browsers, yes they have other revenue streams however Apple isn’t going to screw up their #1 revenue stream.
Google is an ad company that happens to sell some hardware like pixels and smart things and nest thermostats. The lions share of revenue comes from web advertising/collecting data.

Except he is wrong. He primarily doesn't buy Android devices because they preload carrier bloatware that must stay on the phone. Except the actual hardware Google sells directly are unlocked and have no carrier bloatware on them. If you go directly through a carrier, a couple apps may come pre-installed but they are all un-installable.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Except he is wrong. He primarily doesn't buy Android devices because they preload carrier bloatware that must stay on the phone. Except the actual hardware Google sells directly are unlocked and have no carrier bloatware on them. If you go directly through a carrier, a couple apps may come pre-installed but they are all un-installable.

Okay

 

[MrSquished]

The point is carriers should not be allowed to do this. Period. On any phone.

It's amazing people are like, well this is normal so I'm going to promote a product, along with a bit of misinformation.

Even if you buy an unlocked Google pixel or any iPhone which both have zero bloatware, if you install a carrier app this spying can be on by default. It's ridiculous.

To react by saying well whatever, buy an apple, is just wrong. They can still do it to you if you install their app to just manage your account.

This should be illegal. The fact that corporations have folks turning this into a brand versus brand thing just means they won the debate already.

 

[MtnMan]

This is why you never buy a phone directly from your carrier. Especially not any Android phone.

My personal belief is that Apple devices tend to fare better in the privacy department, primarily because they never preload any carrier BS. I downloaded the 'My Verizon' app mainly for the monthly freebies, and AFAIK they don't have permission to access any browsing history from Safari or Chrome. But if I no longer feel comfortable, I can just remove the app.

Don't have permission... now that's funny.

 

[UNCjigga]

Don't have permission... now that's funny.

I meant it from an iOS system perspective, not like there's some government watchdog actually enforcing anything. I used to work at Verizon, and I often worked with the team that managed all the carrier preloads. Exclusive devices were the worst when it came to bloatware and carrier sanctioned spyware (especially anything branded Droid or, more lately, from LG.)

I know Apple recently added some sort of private relay into iCloud+ that I have yet to try out--hopefully that would be another way to isolate web traffic between apps?

 

[MtnMan]

I meant it from an iOS system perspective, not like there's some government watchdog actually enforcing anything. I used to work at Verizon, and I often worked with the team that managed all the carrier preloads. Exclusive devices were the worst when it came to bloatware and carrier sanctioned spyware (especially anything branded Droid or, more lately, from LG.)

I know Apple recently added some sort of private relay into iCloud+ that I have yet to try out--hopefully that would be another way to isolate web traffic between apps?

I was just injecting a little reality...

 

[MrSquished]

Turns out the GQP helped make this easier to do. My god the Republicans are just terrible people at everything

President Trump delivers final blow to Web browsing privacy rules

ISP privacy rules are dead as Trump signs repeal instead of issuing veto.

arstechnica.com

 

[ch33zw1z]

Turns out the GQP helped make this easier to do. My god the Republicans are just terrible people at everything

President Trump delivers final blow to Web browsing privacy rules

ISP privacy rules are dead as Trump signs repeal instead of issuing veto.

arstechnica.com

Oh yeah, the GOP totally had net neutrality and privacy rules in it's crosshairs from day one. As the rest of the modern civilized world implements things like GDPR, American conservatives want big Telco to raw dog your data. And their voters are either ok with it or too dumb to realize what they're voting for.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Wrt op, yes ...it's horrible. The best thing you can do is not run extra software you don't need, like a Verizon account app.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Wrt op, yes ...it's horrible. The best thing you can do is not run extra software you don't need, like a Verizon account app.

Yeah, before I was aware of all the spying carrier apps did....
Three or four years ago I added the T-Mobile my account thing to my iPhone (refurb unlocked) simply because they had frequent give away mini contests/raffles. Simple things like free sandwich at wherever or $.10 coffee at xxx plus a few decent prizes like enter to win a galaxy tablet and so on.
Moderately fun app, easy to view your bill but overall not very useful. After a few weeks it felt like my battery was depleting rapidly and I knew it had somewhere are 90% life left when I bought it. Checked the battery life thing in iOS and the stupid T-Mobile app which at that time I barely used was eating up a huge portion of my battery. Not the top item but close to it and I thought what lazy ass programming why is this app using so much of my battery? Why is it using so much of my battery when I haven’t used it in days or weeks?
I uninstalled it and battery went back to normal. Now I am smart enough to know that dumb app was likely collecting all sorts of data about me and reporting it back to god knows who for god knows what reason.

Edit: not sure if iOS had the battery performance thing listed. I may have noticed it running in the background frequently and deleted it then. I forgot but regardless deleting that app added a noticeable amount of time between charges.