Originally published at: How to Stop T-Mobile from Selling Your Web Browsing Data - TidBITS
T-Mobile will start selling your usage data to advertisers next month unless you opt out now.
According to one comment on the AppleInsider forum, prepaid customers arenāt allowed to opt-out.
And some people (including myself) have a T-Mobile work phone that is managed by an employerās IT department and therefore canāt opt-out because only the IT people have the login credentials necessary to access the account. (Hopefully the IT people will opt-out on our behalf).
This may be illegal in the EU, but Iām not sure. There is no opt-out to be found in T-Mās app here in NL in the EU.
Their link for Verizon is broken - returns a 404 error.
To get to the right page, go to https://www.verizon.com/. Then log in using the link in the upper-right corner.
Once logged in, hover the mouse pointer over Account (at the top of the screen) and click on Privacy Settings on the left-side column of the popup menu.
From there, there are separate links to edit Privacy Settings and Verizon Selects (a different targeted ad program) settings.
Iām not going to share a link to the target page, because it appears that different account types (e.g. prepaid vs postpaid) are taken to different pages.
Itās baffling to me this is even legal in the US. How can selling my data to 3rd parties without my expressed consent be legal? How can it be legal to default all their customers to opt-in and then tell them via another 3rd party (Ars) to ājust opt-outā if they donāt like that?
The last European country I worked in had one very simple privacy law. Any of your data acquired by a company you have business with can only be used for purposes expressed when you enter business with them. Anything they later want to add needs your explicit permission. In that system the default would have been opt-out and the burden would have been on T-Mobile to convince me to allow them to monetize something that belongs to me, my data.
If I didnāt know that AT&T or Verizon were just as bad this would have certainly got me to leave T-Mobile. Iām sure T-Mobile is well aware of that market dynamic (or rather lack thereof). Just one more reason why itās quite unfortunate we here in the US now have only these three mega corps to choose from when we choose a cellular network. But please tell me again how itās in my best interest that regulators shouldnāt regulate and how reduced competition is somehow good for me. /smh
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Iām a T-Mobile customer, and hate that they are doing this. It does seem unethical and potentially illegal. Fortunately, thereās are new FTC and FCC sheriffs in town.
If youāre a subscriber like me, log in and go to Profile > Privacy and notifications > Advertiser & Analytics, and click each line in turn, and then click disable āuse my dataā¦ā I did that for the seven lines we have (four in my family plus a Watch plus my parentsā lines, which are on my plan).
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Iām prepaid t-mobile (a grandfathered plan). I added a refill card last week, and while logged in I tried to look at the Privacy and Notification settings to make sure everything was still off. Got an error of āWe are currently having trouble with your request. Please wait a few minutes and try againā Tried a few times then gave up, assuming server issues. Iām getting the same error today, so I donāt yet know if new opt out settings exist for prepaid. It could be that the error is a quick way to remove any control we had earlier too, or it could be incompetence. Probably the latter.
Getting the error is an improvement over yesterday when all I could get is server isnāt availableā¦gee, I wonder why they went down?
It was enough to finally get me to turn on protonvpn on every device. Iāve been intermittent before. I also threw them some money for the plus subscription to get access to their blockers for ads, malware and tracking.
Iād been considering switching to Mint Mobile, which is cheaper than the plan I currently have. The decision is now made to opt-out of t-mobile itself, and the Mint tryout sim is on its way. From reviews, it may be somewhat throttled compared to direct t-mob, but it will still be a lot faster than my home dsl. The main disadvantage will be that apple music data use will count.
Yes, I know Mint runs over t-mobile, but I hate all of the carriers, and at least it reduces the revenue theyāll get from me.
Iāll be taking good advantage of that feedback link! I may also put in a complaint to our attorney generalāFergusson loves going after sleazy communications companies. If this is illegal (especially prepaid not being able to opt out easily if at all), heāll probably be on it.
I was wondering how this issue affected those of us who use a carrier that buys access from one of these Major Players. I use Consumer Cellular so I asked them how the issue of selling user data plays out and hereās what they said:
āWe use the network towers of both AT&T and T-Mobile. However, you are not their customer. That means they donāt have access to our databases, and they canāt distribute your information to other agencies. Thereās is no need to opt ut of that since we wonāt share your information.ā
And for my family, they are much less expensive than AT&T, Verison, or T-Moble/Sprint.
Iāve got that 200 MB for free each month plan, and I was unable to opt out.
Thanks for that idea, although since I usually donāt come near the 200 MB over cellular, probably I donāt care if T-Mobile sells the pittance of my browsing history.
Thanks for posting that. I suspected as much, but itās nice to have some confirmation. (My phone runs on a different mobile virtual network operator than Consumer Cellular, but I assume itās the same for all of them.)
Legally thatās true, but the main carriers have your unique phone IMEI and access to all of the data that goes through their servers, plus locations even if you arenāt their direct customer. If they want to harvest everything they can, and Iād be surprised if they donāt since there have never been serious repercussions even if they get get caught. Even if they donāt sell it, itās vulnerable to illegal access.
Iāve known it all along and meant to mitigate whatās possible (what you do with your data; thereās nothing to be done about IMEI and location data), but inertia. Every now and again, being unpleasantly prodded is useful.
t-mobile is still showing the ācurrently having troubleā error. Iām finding it hard to believe that itās an honest server problem after 10 days of it.
My guess is that about 95% of content that is available online could not afford to exist without the income third party ad sales generates. Itās why Facebook is totally apoplectic over Appleās nutrition labels. And the vast majority of people around the globe donāt give a hoot about whether they are being tracked or not. Facebook is #3 among the worldās most visited websites, #2 among the worldās most visited apps. Add in WhatsApp, Messenger, etc., and the revenue picture and stock price gets stronger and continues to grow every year.
I think thatās just for advertisers and analytics. To opt out of the selling of your data, you have to follow the special link in Joshās paragraph above and specifically opt out. I was not able to make the opt out button stick in Safari but it appears to have worked with Chrome.
Thanks for that tipāI canāt believe they have a second place you have to do this! (Itās possible the account-based settings also apply, because they seem very broad.) This turned out to be my experience with Safari as well: it failed; I switched to Chrome; now T-Mobileās account system seems to be down.
Now itās back online, and, even in Chrome, I canāt click Done. However, the āoffā switch is to āoffā for Do Not Sellā¦we need the FCC to ban opt-out practices
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