T-Mobile US says it will start selling web+device usage data to the digital profiling industry by default.
But don't worry it's not tied to your name but only to personal identifiers that are much more suitable to track and follow you everywhere anyway. t-mobile.com/privacy-center…
Telecommunication services are basic digital infrastructure, and they should not be allowed to sell behavioral data at all.
It's bad enough if they trick people into 'opting in', selling it by default is beyond bad.
Such reckless and irresponsible business practices must end.
Also, T-Mobile US owns PushSpring, a consumer data broker that trades in extensive mobile data on hundreds of millions of people without their knowledge.
"We may also share mobile device identifiers, device and service usage data, and demographics information with third-party advertising partners..."
"These third parties have their own privacy notices that apply to their use of the information we share"
Personal/identifiable data they sell may include the websites visited, the apps used and the time spent using them, data about the "use of products and services", and data on movements based on the "location of cell towers serving your device". t-mobile.com/privacy-center…
While they claim to exploit 'precise location data' based on cell tower triangulation only based on opt-in, it is not clear to me whether they use it to make individual-level inferences without opt-in.
Telcos: "But Google and FB are also basic infrastructure and they're allowed to exploit personal information at scale, that's unfair"
Yep, this is why we should ban infrastructure-level services by platform giants from exploiting personal data for profit.
In other news, T-Mobile NL has been sharing pseudonymous location data with the Dutch statistical agency for years, without the public's knowledge.
I think statistical agencies have an important role in public-interest data processing, but that's a no go. nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/03…
In 2018, T-Mobile US and others were caught selling exact location data for non-advertising purposes. Their CEO publicly 'pledged' that T-Mobile US won't sell to 'shady middlemen' anymore. Which was not true. washingtonpost.com/news/the-switc… fiercewireless.com/regulatory/t-m…
Sadly, the chatbot on the website of T-Mobile US' mobile data broker subsidiary PushSpring didn't answer my question about whether they would sell profile data on EU devices, even though they promised to be back in 3 hours.
Some more findings from our investigation of LiveRamp's ID graph system (), which maintains identity records about entire populations in many countries, including name, address, email and phone, and aims to link these records with all kinds of digital IDs:crackedlabs.org/en/identity-su…
Identity data might seem boring, but if a company knows all kinds of identifying info about everyone, from home address to email to device IDs, it is in a powerful position to recognize persons and link profile data scattered across many databases, and this is what LiveRamp does.
LiveRamp aims to provide clients with the ability to recognize a person who left some digital trace in one context as the same person who later left some trace elsewhere.
It has built a sophisticated system to do this, no matter how comprehensive it can recognize the person.
As part of our new report on RTB as a security threat and previously unreported, we reveal 'Patternz', a private mass surveillance system that harvests digital advertising data on behalf of 'national security agencies'.
5 billion user profiles, data from 87 adtech firms. Thread:
'Patternz' in the report by @johnnyryan and me published today:
Patternz is operated by a company based in Israel and/or Singapore. I came across it some time ago, received internal docs. Two docs are available online.
Here's how Patternz can be used to track and profile individuals, their location history, home address, interests, information about 'people nearby', 'co-workers' and even 'family members', according to information available online:
, a 'social risk intelligence platform' that provides digital profiles about named individuals regarding financial strain, food insecurity, housing instability etc for healthcare purposes.
"It calculates risk scores for each risk domain for each person", according to the promotional video, and offers "clarity and granularity for the entire US".
Not redlining, though. They color it green.
Making decisions based on these metrics about individuals and groups seems to be highly questionable and irresponsible bs.
Bazze, a US data broker that purchases smartphone location data from mobile apps and advertising firms, and sells to the US Dept of Defense, according to the WSJ (), openly promotes a commercial location mass surveillance system for 'government customers'. wsj.com/tech/cybersecu…
I extracted information about mobile location data they claim to sell per country from their website:
New WSJ report found that 'Near', a consumer data broker based in India, Singapore and the US with an office in France, obtained massive location data via digital advertising firms like OpenX, Smaato and AdColony and sold it to US defense/intel agencies: wsj.com/tech/cybersecu…
Near's general counsel and chief privacy officer:
The US govt "gets our illegal EU data twice per day", a "massive illegal data dump".
"We sell geolocation data for which we do not have consent to do so", "we sell data outside the EU for which we do not have consent to do so"
If this isn't reason for EU data protection authorities to take urgent action than I don't know what is.
Yesterday, I published a case study that examines enterprise software for process mining, workflow automation and algorithmic management.
I identified a list of mechanisms that involve personal data processing and can affect workers individually (right) or collectively (center).
I guess rarely anyone has ever examined this kind of software at such a level of detail, from a worker perspective.
The case study explores how employers can exploit worker data based on enterprise software docs. The chart is an excerpt from section 7: crackedlabs.org/en/data-work/p…
The case study is largely based on an analysis of enterprise software docs from a single vendor and its partners, which has its limitations. It's the third in a series of case studies, which are part of a larger project that aims to map how employers use personal data on workers.