Any suggestions for a way to poison the data. Say an autobrowser that could generate traffic to obscure your actual traffic?
Any other ideas?
AT&T is charging an extra $29/month to opt out of “tracking information”
11–20 of 22 posts
Re: AT&T is charging an extra $29/month to opt out of “tracking information”
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Google track pages visited by their fibre subscribers?
I don't think there is any doubt that the synergy with a Google services, which do track, is part of the basic business proposition of Fiber for Google. Given that, exactly where the tracking happens is an implementation detail. The end result is that for most customers, the $70 price point is subsidized by tracking.
They explicitly say that there is no such synergy on Fiber. So whatever AT&T is selling for $30 is already included in the regular price of Google Fiber.
Other information from the use of Google Fiber Internet (such as URLs of websites visited or content of communications) will not be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber, except with your consent or to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.
Re: AT&T is charging an extra $29/month to opt out of “tracking information”
#13not an issue , these days you can get an OpenVZ VPS for $15/yr on lowendbox.com that gives you 1 or 2TB bandwidth a month, tunnel your web traffic via "ssh -D" and your done.
Re: AT&T is charging an extra $29/month to opt out of “tracking information”
#14I hate the precedent of having to opt-out of targeted advertising, but I hate even more that I can't pay Google (or Facebook, etc), any amount of money to do so.
Does Google track pages visited by their fibre subscribers?
They don't need to - everybody does the tacking for them at the other end by putting google-analytics everything.
Re: AT&T is charging an extra $29/month to opt out of “tracking information”
#15On one hand, I applaud AT&T for giving users an option. On the other ...
1) It assumes privacy is not a right, but a priveledge you pay for. People who can't afford ~$360/year have just as much right to privacy as those who can. This is what government regulation is for, to prevent the negative consequences of open marketplace competition.
2) It's a limited, almost pointless solution. Everyone else can track you: Your phone provider knows everwhere you go, everyone you communicate with, what you say to them, etc. On your computer, websites, ad networks, hosted services (Google, Facebook, etc.). Your electric company, your TV, your credit card company, etc. etc. AT&T might buy info from other sources on the customers who pay to prevent ISP tracking. (And what if each of those vendors charged $360/year for the priveledge of privacy?) Again, the only solution is government regulation; individuals can't hope to protect themselves.
3) It's expensive, as expensive as a cheap Internet connection.
Is it priced at cost plus a margin? If so, that implies each user's tracking data is worth maybe $20/month to AT&T. That seems very high; if users only knew what they were giving away!
Or is it priced at what AT&T thinks the market will bear? Is there really a market for limited privacy at $30/month?
Re: AT&T is charging an extra $29/month to opt out of “tracking information”
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think there is any doubt that the synergy with a Google services, which do track, is part of the basic business proposition of Fiber for Google. Given that, exactly where the tracking happens is an implementation detail. The end result is that for most customers, the $70 price point is subsidized by tracking.
They explicitly say that there is no such synergy on Fiber. So whatever AT&T is selling for $30 is already included in the regular price of Google Fiber. Other information from the use of Google Fiber Internet (such as URLs of websites visited or content of communications) will not be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber, except with your consent or to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal proces…
Not associated with your Google Account doesn't mean isn't tracked, kept, or otherwise used.
It references their general Google privacy policy to show how they use information about you. The same privacy policy that allows them to stalk you across the world.
Also even if they didn't, Google has a monopoly over search engines, so this just vertical integration. It would be like Microsoft saying "we don't spy on OneDrive, but Google spies on Google Drive!" while microsoft then spies using Windows it knows that 95% of users will have installed. Distinction without a difference IMO.
Re: AT&T is charging an extra $29/month to opt out of “tracking information”
#17Fortunately, you can host your own VPN server on DigitalOcean for $5/month. Heck, you could probably even get away with one of atlantic.net's $1/month servers.
> Fortunately, you can host your own VPN server on DigitalOcean for $5/month. Heck, you could probably even get away with one of atlantic.net's $1/month servers.
Does DigitalOcean track you any less than AT&T?
Re: AT&T is charging an extra $29/month to opt out of “tracking information”
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think there is any doubt that the synergy with a Google services, which do track, is part of the basic business proposition of Fiber for Google. Given that, exactly where the tracking happens is an implementation detail. The end result is that for most customers, the $70 price point is subsidized by tracking.
They explicitly say that there is no such synergy on Fiber. So whatever AT&T is selling for $30 is already included in the regular price of Google Fiber. Other information from the use of Google Fiber Internet (such as URLs of websites visited or content of communications) will not be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber, except with your consent or to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal proces…
Signing up for Fiber requires creating a Google account, and the way the policy is written, they can share non-personally identifiable information about your online activity with advertisers so long as they don't tie it to your Google account. Between those two clauses, and pervasive use of Search/Gmail/Analytics, there's probably little activity they can't pick up.
Also, note that they explicitly say they'll tie your TV-viewing habits to your Google account. It's easy to overlook this, but TV ad revenue is still 50% higher than online ad revenue, so this is a major synergy.
Re: AT&T is charging an extra $29/month to opt out of “tracking information”
#19Does this somehow conflict with the DCMA safe harbor provisions? I thought the deal was that they weren't responsible for the things done on their network as long as they don't know about it.
You'd be hardpressed to claim that having information in a database mean they knew about it. That is sort of the whole point. That Youtube video that is copyrighted is in the Yahoo server. But Youtube doesn't know about it.
Re: AT&T is charging an extra $29/month to opt out of “tracking information”
#20Does this somehow conflict with the DCMA safe harbor provisions? I thought the deal was that they weren't responsible for the things done on their network as long as they don't know about it.
Forget the DMCA - someone should mention to the fundies that the it's time to for another round of Obscenity lawsuits. If the ISP wants to volunteer that they have enough information to filter[1] for "obscene"[2] pages, then they can have the liability as well, or at lest the "fun" of having to defend against fundies wielding banhammers.
[1] the fact that a perfect filter is impossible isn't relevant - it just has to be good enough to catch "enough" to allow a parent to think they have "protected" their kid from the scary things on the internet.
[2] Finding things on the internet that would qualify ss "obscene" is trivial, especially if someone were to get creative in how they apoply Miller Test style "community standards".