Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

alpha.app.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 131 posts

Re: Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

#101

Post by graue »

JeremyBanks wrote: post #96
Evbn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Just to be like twitter, but different, with no comprehension of why the Twitter limit exists?

Comprehending why the Twitter limit exists should let you comprehend why there's no point for App.net to follow it. The service won't actually be used for "micro-blogging" unless users are constrained by some limit, but 144 is too damn small. Nobody would ever have picked it if they weren't forced to, and these days they aren't. What infinitesimal fraction of modern Twitter users in App.net's target market do you ima…

I've been using Tent (https://tent.io) which also adopted 256 characters, and I think it's actually quite generous for statuses. Maybe too much; the nature of microblogging changes when you don't have to be concise. I bet the sweet spot is probably somewhere in 160-200.

Re: Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

#102

Post by fleitz »

Evbn wrote: post #88
fleitz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are definitely more regulated than social network companies, fortunately though they've captured the regulator as predicted by economics so they get to seek rent instead of worrying about regulators. The telecom industry has so effectively captured their regulator that when they are caught tapping phones without warrant they are exempted from lawsuits instead of prosecuted vigorously. If you offered a non-compli…

The telcos weren't wiretapping for profit, but as an agent of the government. You got the direction of power backwards.

I don't think you've seen a wiretapping bill...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/04/03/these-a... "Wiretaps cost hundreds of dollars per target every month, generally paid at daily or monthly rates. To wiretap a customer’s phone, T-Mobile charges law enforcement a flat fee of $500 per target"

Re: Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

#103

Post by w1ntermute »

JeremyBanks wrote: post #96
Evbn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Just to be like twitter, but different, with no comprehension of why the Twitter limit exists?

Comprehending why the Twitter limit exists should let you comprehend why there's no point for App.net to follow it. The service won't actually be used for "micro-blogging" unless users are constrained by some limit, but 144 is too damn small. Nobody would ever have picked it if they weren't forced to, and these days they aren't. What infinitesimal fraction of modern Twitter users in App.net's target market do you ima…

> The service won't actually be used for "micro-blogging" unless users are constrained by some limit, but 144 is too damn small.

The funny thing is that in languages like Japanese and Chinese, where one "character" contains a lot more info than one Latin letter, Twitter is used in quite a different way.

Re: Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

#104

Post by nikcub »

dude_abides wrote: post #3

Thanks for the PSA. While I understand why these things tend to be opt-out by default, I'm surprised there was no email from Verizon updating users about these new settings with a link to opt-out if they wanted to. I used to think that the telecom industry is a lot more regulated than social network companies like Facebook, but I guess that's not really true!

This is a big deal. The FTC will almost certainly investigate it and if it turns out to be as bad as described, will likely take action.

The process might take a while, but they eventually get results. They rely on the public to report incidents:

http://www.ftc.gov/multimedia/video/scam-watch/file-a-compla...

Having multiple people report a claim is good. Also, capturing screenshots etc. of everything you find,since they have a tendency to change and disappear quickly :)

Re: Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

#105

Post by nitrogen »

tomrod wrote: post #67
MichaelApproved wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what the down-vote is meant for. If you think a comment is off-topic, down vote the post and perhaps add a comment as to why you think it deserves to be down-voted. Flagging is expensive, in that it requires mod (human) attention. It should be reserved for spam and other egregious posts. Let the mods spend their valuable time on more important tasks.

Unfortunately, many of us don't have downvote rights yet. If this were the case, I definitely wouldn't flag unless community standards were flagrantly violated!

Don't worry; if you wanted to vote a post down, there's probably someone with high enough karma who also wants to downvote the same post.

Re: Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

#107

Post by [deleted] »

graue wrote: post #101
JeremyBanks wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comprehending why the Twitter limit exists should let you comprehend why there's no point for App.net to follow it. The service won't actually be used for "micro-blogging" unless users are constrained by some limit, but 144 is too damn small. Nobody would ever have picked it if they weren't forced to, and these days they aren't. What infinitesimal fraction of modern Twitter users in App.net's target market do you ima…

I've been using Tent ( https://tent.io ) which also adopted 256 characters, and I think it's actually quite generous for statuses. Maybe too much; the nature of microblogging changes when you don't have to be concise. I bet the sweet spot is probably somewhere in 160-200.

[deleted]

Re: Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

#108

Post by comex »

jlgreco wrote: post #77
joelrunyon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would make it seem more akin to Google+, right? G+ is linked to around here quite often.

Not to be overly harsh, but perhaps the difference is that Google+ is having more things published to it that people actually care about.

Well, yeah, but for the obvious reason - tweets are meant to be short and consumed in large numbers, but aren't generally meaty enough for a discussion, while some people are using Google+ as essentially a blogging platform. 140 (or 256) characters is rarely enough for an entire HN discussion, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy reading dozens of tweets at a time to get a sense of what's going on.

Actually, many of those tweets have links, so in some sense Twitter competes with HN as a link aggregator, not with Google+ as a primary source.

Re: Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

#109

Post by angelbob »

trafnar wrote: post #56
roryokane wrote: post #26

These are the steps to opt out of Verizon “selling your personal data”, as far as I can tell: Visit http://www.vzw.com/myprivacy . If you are not already signed in to My Verizon, you will be prompted to sign in – after doing so, return to that myprivacy page. Click the link “Manage Location Privacy settings” near the bottom, which points to https://locationmanagement.vzw.com/ You should now be at “Location Management…

Exact same for me. I'd like to opt out but I have no idea how from the instructions provided.

Ditto. But I'm using an iPhone, so maybe the Verizon-provided stuff is just not there?

Re: Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

#110

Post by angelbob »

lhnn wrote: post #97
Evbn wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still abusive, to represent that they need it for transactional purposes and then to spam you with it instead.

Flightfox just posted an article about how they more aggressively pursue potential customers with email, and it's doubled their conversion rate. How is this isolated example of snail-mail marketing at all creepy? As long as it's Verizon and not a third party, it isn't strange at all.

There's a difference between "strange" and "creepy".

Something can be really common and still really creepy.

Post reply on HN