Verizon, AT&T tracking their users with ‘supercookies’

[villager]

Verizon and AT&T have been quietly tracking the Internet activity of more than 100 million cellular customers with what critics have dubbed “supercookies” — markers so powerful that it’s difficult for even savvy users to escape them.

The technology has allowed the companies to monitor which sites their customers visit, cataloging their tastes and interests. Consumers cannot erase these supercookies or evade them by using browser settings, such as the “private” or “incognito” modes that are popular among users wary of corporate or government surveillance.

Verizon and AT&T say they have taken steps to alert their customers to the tracking and to protect customer privacy as the companies develop programs intended to help advertisers hone their pitches based on individual Internet behavior. But as word has spread about the supercookies in recent days, privacy advocates have reacted with alarm, saying the tracking could expose user Internet behavior to a wide range of outsiders — including intelligence services — and may also violate federal telecommunications and wiretapping laws.

One civil liberties group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says it has raised its concerns with the Federal Communications Commission and is contemplating formal legal action to block Verizon. AT&T’s program is not as advanced and, according to the company, is still in testing.

The stakes are particularly high, privacy advocates say, because Verizon’s experimentation with supercookies is almost certain to spur copycats eager to compete for a larger share of the multibillion-dollar advertising profits won by Google, Facebook and others.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/verizon-atandt-tracking-their-users-with-super-cookies/2014/11/03/7bbbf382-6395-11e4-bb14-4cfea1e742d5_story.html

[yeoman6987]

1. They may be bored with me

On my Apple I Phone, I go to one site and one site only....DU. I like reading the OPs and replies when waiting around. I have only one APP and that is Facebook that I look at occasionally. Perhaps twice a week. Now for my Apple MacBook laptop, totally different story. I look at many sites and buy a ton from Amazon so I suppose that might be of interest to them.

[villager]

2. You might want to look into an easy way of setting up a "VPN" on your computer

A "Virtual Private Network," which relays your information through more nodes, and makes location, etc., all harder to track (along with your habits).

One easy way is with the Hola extension, which works for Chrome and Firefox browsers, for example...

[yeoman6987]

3. Thank you!

Your post is Greek to me, but I have a friend who is very tech savvy and will have him read your post and help me out. Thanks again!!!!!

[villager]

4. You're welcome! Am still learning this stuff myself, as the defacto repeal of the 4th Amendment

...has kind of forced me into it.

https://hide.me/en/ seems to offer another free VPN service -- I use that one on my (ATT!) phone, to make personal data harder to "collate."

Figure we're at least obliged to not make it easy on our "monitors."

[randome]

5. A cookie is simply a piece of data stored in a file.

So a 'super'cookie is, what, 'super'data stored in a 'super'file? Sounds like alarmist techno-babble to me.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[villager]

6. You are free to keep not being alarmed at increased compilations of data on all of us.

In fact, we'd expect nothing less of you.

[LondonReign2]

10. Super NSA Defenderman to the rescue!

Although that was a really poor effort. Maybe wait for the talking points?

[marions ghost]

7. Dragnet Nation

http://www.amazon.com/Dragnet-Nation-Security-Relentless-Surveillance/dp/0805098070/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415124651&sr=1-1&keywords=julia+angwin+dragnet+nation

[villager]

11. Indeed we are

Thanks for the link...

[Go Vols]

8. Delete supercookies

Better Privacy serves to protect against special longterm cookies, a new generation of 'Super-Cookie', which silently conquered the Internet. This new cookie generation offers unlimited user tracking to industry and market research. Concerning privacy Flash-cookies are most critical.
This add-on was made to make users aware of those hidden, never expiring objects and to offer an easier way to view and to manage them - since browsers are unable to do that for you.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/betterprivacy/


Been using this on Firefox for a couple of years.

[villager]

9. Thanks! The question is, would it also work on a phone's browser, as well

...operating with a different OS?

My understanding is it's the browsing done via the cell network (I'm unclear whether wi-fi browsing on phones leads to the same "data capture" in this manner) that Verizon & ATT are doing, which is to say, compiling the web habits of specific devices.

Like yours. (If you're smartphoning on their networks...)