Verizon's AOL deal brings new privacy worries
Q. Verizon Wireless sent me a notice that it’s going to combine its advertising system with AOL’s. How much more closely can they track me?
A. Unless you’ve gone out of your way to opt out of Verizon’s “Relevant Mobile Advertising” program, the nation’s largest wireless carrier already knows an extraordinary amount about your online habits.
But if you’ve spent time at AOL’s network of sites -- including such popular destinations as the Huffington Post -- Verizon can soon learn even more about your interests even as it scales back “RMA” tracking.
Let’s start with a refresher course in that controversial program. It employs a tracking header -- what Verizon calls a “Unique Identifier Header,” or UIDH, and which opponents label a “supercookie,” “permacookie” or “zombie cookie” -- that Verizon Wireless has automatically added to most of its customers’ Web traffic.
Further, it was not just Verizon that could track your visits to sites that don’t encrypt your connection (as indicated by a lock icon in a browser’s address bar). The people running sites that you visit could also look for this header, then employ other Web tracking technologies like “cookies” -- tiny files that sites, this one included, save to your browser to monitor and customize your visits--to follow you elsewhere.
A second Verizon advertising program, “Verizon Selects,” may be less of a worry. This is an opt-in proposition--if you’ve never heard of Selects, you almost certainly didn’t sign up--that offers participants a small incentive, in the form of extra points in Verizon’s “Smart Rewards” rebate program, instead of just closer-targeted ads.
Verizon’s purchase of AOL, completed in June, allowed it to merge the information it’s collected through programs like those two with AOL’s own ad data. And that’s exactly what the notice it posted earlier this month says will happen starting in November.
But at the same time, Verizon says it will cut back on its UIDH tracking. Instead of attaching this beacon to all of your unencrypted traffic, it will only add it to data sent to Verizon and AOL sites, as well as designated “partner sites” that help Verizon and AOL provide service there. I found the clearest explanation of that not at Verizon’s privacy notice, but in a post on its public-policy blog.
That notice also says Verizon will move other customer data, including your street and e-mail address, into AOL’s existing ad network.
Verizon describes this as merely a better-focused version of the traditional online ad proposition: Advertisers tell us what kind of customers they want to have see their ads, and we’ll use our customer data to show it only to those people. It should not have ads dumped in your e-mail inbox or precision-targeted to VzW subscribers on your street.
“For example, an advertiser wants to reach females, over 40, who live in a specific town,” said Verizon spokesman David Samberg. “We provide the advertiser with the ability to have its ad served to people who are part of the group they want to address.”
But although Verizon has made its Relevant Mobile Advertising tracking much less pervasive, I still don’t see the upside for customers. I suggest you exercise the opt-out Verizon only began to offer after months of protests: Visit www.vzw.com/myprivacy, use the My Verizon app if it’s bundled on your mobile device, or call 866-211-0874.
It’s unclear how many people have done so -- Samberg wouldn’t say -- but I hope this story at least gets more Verizon Wireless subscribers to consider their options.
Tip: Facebook’s souped-up search makes public posts less obscure
Two and a half years after its alleged reinvention as “Graph Search,” Facebook’s search feature is starting to live up to what people expected in early 2013. Earlier this week, the social network announced that it would now provide real-time results about all public posts, not just updates from friends.
Beyond being an obvious challenge to Twitter and Google, this change also means that any public posts you might have made years ago just got less obscure.
The simplest way to check for any you might have shared with the world years ago, intentionally or not, is to use Facebook’s option to show your profile as strangers see it. Go to your profile in a desktop browser, click the ellipsis icon below your header photo, and click “View As…” to see how the public sees it.
There’s also a one-click shortcut to make any public posts friends-only: Click the lock icon in Facebook’s desktop toolbar, select “See More Settings,” and click “Limit Past Posts.”
Rob Pegoraro is a tech writer based out of Washington, D.C. To submit a tech question, e-mail Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/robpegoraro.