AT&T Says It’ll Stop Selling Your Location Data

"We're sorry we got caught."

 

So what’s Verizon’s take on this? “Cool! More people will want OUR data!” ?

 

Verizon will stop selling real-time location data to third-party brokers (from last June)

 

Another in the long list of businesses that take the information we’re giving them for a specific purpose, and then frivolously gives it to [???].

Who’s buying the data?

 

T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T Are Selling Customers’ Location Data • chorus.fm

 

I don’t understand why I get so surprised and upset that companies are doing this to us. I know business has no respect for people or privacy, but the “yeah we took it, what you gonna do about it?” feeling of helplessness against a faceless corporation is deeply unsettling.

Companies that participate in unsavory practices like this should be strongly reprimanded and overseen thereafter. Alas, a simple fine and hollow apology, if that, will be issued and we’ll continue to live in ignorance. The tide goes in, the tide goes out.

I like to think I configure my apps and devices to share only what is necessary, and this sometimes lessens my experience. When you see that the service you rely on for communication is selling you out for as little as $5, what’s the point of trying to protect what little privacy you thought you had? I’m not so naive to think if you’re on the internet you’re not exposed in some way, but when your stuff is freely handed out to sketchy actors (whether directly or through a chain), it makes you throw up your hands.

 

Absolutely, but instead it gets twisted that governments need to bend over backwards to accommodate big businesses at risk of job loss.