AT&T Exploring What to Do With Stored User Location Data Data Hugely Valuable to Urban Planners, Marketers, Everyone... We've noted for some time how wireless carriers are only just starting to figure out how to cash in on customer location monitoring, selling the data to everyone from marketing departments to city planners. It's rather amusing to watch story after story emerge where people suddenly seem surprised at the scope of this monitoring -- and at the total lack of oversight or consumer protections involved. Several years on the Newark Star Ledger is the latest to discover that wireless carriers track everything you do. The story's of particular interest in that it explores how an AT&T lab in Morristown is trying to figure out just what to do with all that data. Since entire city traffic and movement patterns can be analyzed, it's of incredible value for urban planners and developers: Volinsky’s team’s research will give Morristown access to a wealth of real-time data, and officials there hope it will help them answer questions about infrastructure, housing and zoning, as well as transportation. The patterns of how people move between cities will also help in coordinating with neighboring municipalities, said town administrator Michael Rogers.
AT&T says the information culled by the research team is anonymous and covered under the company’s terms of service. Researchers do not listen to any calls or read messages, and Volinsky said any reference to individual cell-phone owners has been scrubbed from the database to protect the customers’ privacy. Individual records are not available to Morristown officials or their contractors, he added. Consumers are informed of this tracking through a smattering of fine print, and due to the billions to be made across industries, there's absolutely no serious effort being made to introduce consumer protections. AT&T's researchers in the story note they wanted to find a use for the data that "benefited society, rather than for marketing," though you get the sense those noble ambitions will quickly fall by the wayside as AT&T executives get further involved.
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 | | Advertisers Suckin at AT&T's Teat You know they are. Market Researchers, product placement agencies, ... all ready to sell their mothers to have at that data.
And all the while, people are like, uh...(zombies) to it.
Hello? You are freely giving away this data for them to profit off of, right? Google makes an average of $5K per person just by searches and surfing.
"I'm Sorry Mr and Mrs Facebook-user, but because you don't buy enough online, choose Like enough, make comments on DSLreports dot com, use Bing instead of Google, visit few sites, click enough ads, drive only to supermarket once a week, get gas at four different Valero and Exxon stations, avoid tolls, park in front of Starbucks nightly, we can't approve your mortgage refinance".
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Splat | |
|  |  LinklistPremium
join:2002-03-03
Longport, NJ
kudos:5 | Re: Advertisers Suckin at AT&T's Teat said by cableties:"I'm Sorry Mr and Mrs Facebook-user, but because you don't buy enough online, choose Like enough, make comments on DSLreports dot com, use Bing instead of Google, visit few sites, click enough ads, drive only to supermarket once a week, get gas at four different Valero and Exxon stations, avoid tolls, park in front of Starbucks nightly, we can't approve your mortgage refinance".
Maybe you missed the part of the story where no individual identifying data is available. This is demographic data and nothing else. | |
| | | | | Re: Advertisers Suckin at AT&T's Teat An exercise for the reader:
Use your phone's GPS to store a week's worth of location data. Then use google earth to plot your movements. You'll quickly see that the endpoints of your GPS tracks mostly correspond to your home and your work.
Location data is itself individually identifying. | |
| | | | | | Re: Advertisers Suckin at AT&T's Teat And how would one do this?
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Stunod | |
| | | | | | | Re: Advertisers Suckin at AT&T's Teat I run FoxtrotGPS[1] on my phone to log GPS data. I then use GPSBabel[2] to convert the data to a format readable by google earth.
[1] »www.foxtrotgps.org/
[2] »www.gpsbabel.org/ | |
| | | | | | | | Re: Advertisers Suckin at AT&T's Teat I don't think they support the iPhone...
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Stunod | |
| | | | | | | | | Re: Advertisers Suckin at AT&T's Teat There's more than one way to skin a cat... | |
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| | | If you were going to loan someone $200,000, wouldn't you want to know some details about how they live?
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Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty - Ronald Reagan | |
| | |  N3OGHYo Soy Col. "Bat" GuanoPremium
join:2003-11-11
Philly burbs
kudos:1 | Re: Advertisers Suckin at AT&T's Teat Sure, but only information that relates to their ability to pay it back.
Employment history, income, and how well they paid off previous debts.
How often someone visits Starbucks, or the local strip joint is their business. If they are a consistent pay, they are a consistent pay....
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Petty people are disproportionally corrupted by petty power | |
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| Re: Advertisers Suckin at AT&T's Teat Correct.
Insurance companies however, would like to know every piece of information that they can use to their advantage.
Eg. What kind of food you eat (medical/life insurance), what route you take to work (probability of accidents for auto insurance/life insurance). | |
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 firephotoFacts hurtPremium
join:2003-03-18
Brewster, WA | It's simple You market the data for a profit, once that is firmly established and everyone is universally aware of this you moan about the costs of this service then within the year you start to charge your customers for using the location services features for a base rate and then charge extra fees when the people who use the service the most go over their allotment at a rate that exceeds the profit derived from all other methods of profiting on this "highly specialized and complicated to clearly understand" information that is sometimes referred to as data . | |
| |  TransmasterDon't Blame Me I Voted For Bill and Opus
join:2001-06-20
Cheyenne, WY | One Word Google I wonder, hmmm, how did Google get so big? | |
| | | firephotoFacts hurtPremium
join:2003-03-18
Brewster, WA | Re: One Word Google said by Transmaster:I wonder, hmmm, how did Google get so big?
I don't wonder. They marketed statistics based on user interaction with google websites and websites with google advertising mechanisms as it relates to commercial advertising.
Even simpler, they offered a product at no cost that became wildly popular to the extent that people wanted to invest money in them which allowed them to expand their infrastructure which made more people want to invest more money in them till the point they publicly offered stock and made money for all the initial investors.
They did not become HUGE because they sold Jon Doughs coffee buying habits like other companies do.
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Say no to JAMS! | |
| | | |  dlathemPremium
join:2000-08-11
Birmingham, AL | Re: One Word Google When the service is free you are not the consumer, you are the product! | |
| | | | |  ieolusSupport The Clecs
join:2001-06-19
Duluth, GA | Re: One Word Google It's a cookbook, it's a cookbook! | |
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| | Never laughed so hard quote:
AT&T's researchers in the story note they wanted to find a use for the data that "benefited society, rather than for marketing," though you get the sense those noble ambitions will quickly fall by the wayside as AT&T executives get further involved.
I am sure the Empire has all of our best interests at heart.  | |
| | | Siri And this is why they bought Siri and why IBM bans it from their campuses. | |
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