On Monday, the FCC issued a consent decree hitting Verizon with a $1.3 million fine for injecting those tracking beacons, called Unique Identifier Headers or UIDH, into unencrypted traffic on its network without customers’ knowledge or consent—a violation of both the Communications Act of 1934 and the FCC’s Open Internet Transparency Rule.
Apart from the fine, the FCC also ruled that Verizon must be more transparent about its use of the beacons and, crucially, must not share customers’ beacons with third parties unless they opt in.
But the decree has a glaring loophole: Verizon can still track customers who haven’t specifically opted-in through AOL’s expansive advertising network, which according to ComScore reached 35 percent of all desktop internet users through ads appearing on websites they visited in January. That’s because Verizon now owns AOL, making its ad network a Verizon subsidiary instead of a “third party.”
Source: Vice Magazine
Internet users these days are largely accustomed to having their activity tracked by the services they use: Google reads your Gmail. Facebook monitors which stories you click on. And so on.
Now Verizon wants to expand its role in this universe by sharing what it knows about you with AOL.
Source: Washington Post
Verizon/AOL Merger: Good For Their Business, Bad For Your Privacy:
The National Journal spoke with privacy and consumer advocates about the merger, and those advocates say through could be a lot of red flags waving.
“Whether or not the combination of a major online advertiser with the largest mobile-services provider raises substantial antitrust concerns, it raises extremely substantial and urgent privacy concerns,” Harold Feld from consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge told the National Journal.
“Verizon has already shown an alarming tendency to harvest private information from subscribers to bolster its foray into online advertising.”