Late last year, Uber made a change to its app that let it track customers after their rides had ended. Many troubled months later, the company is finally walking back that tweak, and will once again let customers have more control over when their locations are used. [More]
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Google’s Tracking Of Offline Spending Sparks Call For Federal Investigation
By 7.31.17
Google recently announced a suite of new tools for advertisers, allowing them to link a customer’s offline credit card purchases with the things they look at online. Shockingly, some privacy advocates think this sort of tracking goes too far and have called on the federal government to investigate. [More]
5 Things We’ve Learned About How Companies Track You Online And Off
By 1.25.17
Is there an ad that seems to be following you everywhere? Perhaps you browsed for new sneakers in a slow moment at work a week ago, and now you see ads for them on every site you view on your phone? Or maybe you clicked an ad on Facebook, and now that company’s product seems to be stalking you around the internet, asking you to buy it in every sidebar ad you see. [More]
Sen. Franken Asks Uber To Give Customers More Control Over Use Of Their Data
By 12.22.16
Last month, Uber updated its location tracking policies asking users to allow the app to continue following them for five minutes after their ride ends. Unsurprisingly, the change was met with some concern from users and privacy advocates. Now, lawmakers are jumping into the fray, urging Uber to upgrade its privacy policy to ensure that sensitive customer data is properly protected. [More]
FTC Orders Company That Used Verizon ‘Supercookies’ To Disclose Terms, Provide Opt-Out
By 12.20.16
A couple of years ago, Verizon caught a lot of heat for a very sneaky practice: the company was inserting a unique, permanent piece of code into all the web traffic on your phone, without user consent, so that a third party could track your every digital move for advertising purposes. After a public outcry, Verizon finally stopped, and settled with the FTC… but that third-party remained a loose thread in the story. Until now. [More]
Study: Your Computer May Be Tracking You Online Through An ‘Audio Fingerprint’
By 5.20.16
We all kind of know that our devices, and our activities on them, are being tracked. In response, there are entire categories of apps and services that let you browse incognito, block ads, or hide your tracks — and many of those are quite popular. But it turns out there’s another kind of tracking signal that those privacy protectors, for the most part, miss. [More]
Verizon, FCC Settle “Supercookie” Investigation With $1.35M Fine And Opt-Out Ability
By 3.7.16
In 2014 and 2015, Verizon caught a lot of attention for doing a couple of very sneaky things. One, they were inserting a little piece of code into all the web traffic on your phone to track your every digital move for advertising purposes. And two, they weren’t letting you opt-out of the tracking, even if you opted out of the ads. [More]
Owners Help Police Track Stolen Tesla Through Mobile App
By 11.3.15
When a thief steals a car it can take owners days, week or even years to retrieve their property. Apparently that’s not the case when your vehicle happens to be a Tesla Model S: a Canadian couple was able to help authorities track their stolen car in real-time with the help of the Tesla mobile app. [More]
Coming Soon To An AOL Ad Network Near You: All That Data Verizon Collects On Mobile Users
By 10.7.15
When Verizon first announced its plans to acquire AOL back in May, jokes abounded. The name “AOL” still conjures the sound of modems screeching and a friendly digital voice announcing haltingly, “You’ve got mail!” It does not, on the other hand, immediately inspire one to think of a $4 billion media and data empire. But the latter is exactly what it is — and in conjunction with Verizon’s more pernicious tools, it may be about to get a whole lot bigger. [More]
American Airlines Launches Real-Time Baggage Tracking Service For Travelers
By 9.29.15
After a long day of traveling the last thing you want to deal with is lost baggage, but, unfortunately, that’s a very real situation for millions of consumers: over the last five years, the Transportation Security Administration paid out $3 million for lost, stolen and damaged baggage. American Airlines is trying to give travelers piece of mind that their bags are well within reach by launching a new bag tracking service. [More]
Privacy Advocates Sue Virginia Police Over Data From Automatic License Plate Scanners
By 5.6.15
By itself, your license plate doesn’t say much except in what state, month, and year you registered your car. But start tracking where and when that license plate goes, and you’ve suddenly got a whole huge pile of personal data about all the comings and goings in someone’s life. We’ve reported before that license plate scanning by public and private entities is both widespread and unregulated. Now, the ACLU is suing police in one state to get them to stop. [More]
Virginia Limits Retention Of License Plate Capture Data To 7 Days
By 3.16.15
We’ve shared with you before the that both private companies and law enforcement are combining images of motorists’ license plates with geographic data about where those plates were spotted. Some states have passed laws limiting how long this data can stay in databases or banning its collection altogether, and Virginia has joined that list as of this month. [More]
Lawmakers Want To Know Who’s Tracking You Online, And Where The Info Goes
By 3.6.15
Everything you do online — on your phone, on your computer, with anything — leaves a digital wake. Put those trails together and you’ve got one massive big data industry that can (and does) track it all and sell it to the highest bidder. After decades of digital detritus building up, regulators and Congress both are contemplating some steps that would help protect consumers’ info. [More]
Verizon Wireless Will Finally Allow Users To Opt Out Of Being Tracked By “Supercookies”
By 1.30.15
Verizon has been watching you. If you use their mobile service, Verizon has been tracking your every move on the internet for the better part of the last two years, with no way for you to opt out. That’s the bad news. Here’s the good: the company is finally letting consumers turn off the trackers. [More]
New, Updated Foursquare Is Always Watching You… Even When You Aren’t Running Foursquare
By 8.7.14
If you launch Foursquare, you expect it to know where you are. The app is explicitly designed to record your location when you open it and so nobody’s shocked if it, well, records their location when they open it. But users who download the new Foursquare are in for a nasty surprise. The app is now tracking users’ locations at all times, whether they’ve opened it or not. [More]
Apple Will Prevent Businesses From Tracking iPhone Users Via Wifi
By 6.10.14
Remember when Nordstrom began tracking customers’ movements in and out of their stores by using smartphones’ individual Media Access Control (MAC) addresses if those phones tried to connect to in-store wifi, then abruptly stopped when the public found out about it? App developers say that Apple is ending such tracking in the next version of its mobile operating system by randomizing MAC addresses. [More]
OnTrac Marks My Packages 'Delivered' Today, Delivers Them Tomorrow
By 8.27.12
Last week, we shared a story from a reader who got a very early wakeup call from OnTrac, on his porch with an Amazon package a few days earlier than anticipated. Ryan, meanwhile, has sort of the opposite problem. No, OnTrac isn’t pounding on his door after he went to bed. His packaged showed up in the system as “delivered” even though there was no sign of it. He actually received it the following day. Is OnTrac messing around with flux capacitors, redefining “delivered,” or is something else going on here? [More]
