Today’s offender inside the world of mobile operators is T-Mobile. Tthe “Uncarrier” does not drop one new pink mobile plan – iIt’s a little more troubling that this. A at least, if you’re concerned about T-Mobile’s data collection practices, and who shares this data with. (You should worry a lot about that.)
Like Drew FitzGerald of The Wall Street Journal he writes:
“The No. 2 operator of U.S. subscribers said in a recent privacy policy update that, unless disabled, it will share customers’ mobile and web app data with advertisers starting April 26th. For example, the program could help advertisers identify people who enjoy cooking or sports fans, the company said.
T-Mobile’s new policy will also cover Sprint customers acquired through the carriers ’2020 merger. Sprint had previously only shared similar data from customers who opted for its third-party ad program. “
While T-Mobile attempts to anonymize the data it packs and transmits to advertisers by encoding identifying features, this does not mean that what you do and the applications you use are completely anonymous. Aaron Mackey, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who is later quoted in the FitzGerald piece, says he is “Trivial” subject to reveal a user’s identity (and telephone practices) by comparing the information value of various data sets.
In 2019, researchers from two European universities found the same thing. Their results, published on paper titled, “Estimating the Success of Reidentifications in Incomplete Data Sets Using Generative Models,” found that “disidentification” or the supposed anonymity of a data set is not very useful when measured factors can distinguish individuals. by themselves or when combined with other data sets.
“With our model, we find that 99.98% of Americans would correctly re-identify themselves in any data set using 15 demographic attributes. Our results suggest that even anonymized data sets with very high samples are likely to meet the modern standards of anonymization set by the GDPR and question the technical and legal adequacy of the model of release and forgetting misidentification. . “
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Fun times, huh? Whether you care about it or not, and I say that, because I definitely know some people who just throw up their hands on data privacy, assuming each service they use tracks them with some capacity; I still think it’s important to take control of your data whenever possible. Normally, this only takes a few minutes to get done places and services you use. Esells if it feels like a silly order …and it will never really free you from advertising technology—every bit helps. Or, at least, cait doesn’t hurt me.
To adjust your ad-sharing settings on T-Mobile, Uncarrier provides you two options:
- “You can disable it using the My T-Mobile app or MyT‑Mobile.com. In the T-Mobile app, visit the MORE tab> Advertising and Analysis> Use my data to make your ads more relevant to me. Turn off the switch (gray) to stop using your data for advertising “.
- “In MyT‑Mobile.com, click the My Account> Profile> Privacy & Notifications> Advertising & Analysis drop-down menu> Use my data to make your ads more relevant to me. Turn off the switch (gray) for stop using your data for advertising “.
I don’t have T-Mobile, so I can’t give you any more help than that (or screenshots). Still, I’m definitely going to review my ad setup on Verizon right now, because you never know. The Wall Street Journal report is about how to adjust them as well, as well as the privacy settings of the other major operators, so now is as good a time as any other to make sure you limit the sharing of Yours data-“anonymous“No.