With technology’s expansion to almost every area of our lives, privacy is becoming a much larger concern for many. Check out the linked articles and let me know what you think.
- What do you think of Verizon’s recent use of ‘super cookies?’
- Do you think this violates it’s customer’s privacy and/or crosses an ethical boundary?
- What do you think of their response when they were ‘caught?’
Welp, here we have it! Another case of Big Brother sniffing around again. It’s almost impossible to fight every battle that the government and/or the big corporations charge. It’s tiresome and it eventually wears the consumer down. For the amount of money one pays in monthly charges and fees, you would think that they would cut you some slack. Verizon, you should really focus your attention on better ways to retain your customers instead of giving them another reason to jump ship.
It sad that the wireless carriers don’t listen to their customers. And if they do they do the apposite. But everyone should take privacy serious.
Privacy should be the main importance in every telephone company. The government needs to do something about it, hackers can take advantage of it and may cause an international issue or problem.
So phone companies were starting to use these super cookies, were called out, and then a year later when people weren’t looking they reinstated the super cookies?
Honestly i have no personal issues with Verizon watching my calls, but it’s concerning how easily they shrugged off opposition. “Oh don’t worry about the people, the election cycle will roll around and people will go be mad about something else.” If you make a statement to the public, i’m pretty sure that adds legal implications to the actions of your company. For example, if your company advertised selling vegan hamburgers, only to later stop selling in favor of savory hot dogs, then you have mislead the people. Giving people a false idea of their situation is unfair, as it doesn’t allow a consumer to make informed decisions. If you want to track our data just be upfront about it.
I would not pay an amount of money every month to use Verizon. Then let Verizon know about what I am doing on the Internet. There are no privacy.
However, the cookies may go away from us cause we use Verizon, but they know all of our activities on the Internet. This violates it’s customer’s privacy.
I’m not sure if I don’t like Verizon or the writer of this article more. “And none of the companies you do business with care about that. They just care about getting caught.” And that ladies and gentlemen is why this writer gets an F-. First of all, yes, Verizon has crossed the privacy boundary, but the problem is much much deeper than to put blame on all business for fraud. Personally when I see incidents like such, I look at the political party that the companies join with and this reveals alot. Are the companies advocating for more government control and interaction with the people and their money, or do they prefer to let the citizens live their own lives? It’s very thought provoking. I prefer to do as I can, not what others can. Now back to Verizon, they had the so called “super cookies” right? Whats any different about this than all of the other internet providers and applications. Don’t we agree to let them see all of this anyway?
There are many other ways where privacy can be at risk. Supercookies is not the only way. And it does not only happen with verizon. Recently, I received a call from Xfinity (which was a scam) where they offered me a promotion for xfinity only if i pay them with an amazon gift card (which are untraceable). They had all my information, including my bill, the package i was using, my name and date of birth, almost everything and they sounded very professional. So yes, supercookies are not the only way where privacy can be at risk. Other companies face these problems as well, including comcast (xfinity), t-mobile, and at&t. It is just how we control it. The government should take necessary and strict steps to ensure that the privacy of everyone remains out of risk and some steps should be taken to control it.
Verizon’s use of the new supercookies is unethical. This essentially collects the persons personality and then abuses this information through advertisements and other computer tasks. I personally see this new addition to Verizon’s collection of my data as scary. This also gives Verizon the ability to always be a step ahead of me by knowing what I want or what I want to do and through this could take advantage of my cellular use. Verizon’s response to being caught is embarrassing. As if they think America is that stupid to believe “The ecosystem is evolving,” Lewis said. “We’re learning as we go.” Shouldn’t you learn what you are using before you use it?
Unfortunately the biggest cooperation’s and companies usually are the ones that steal your money. In this case Verizon is not allowing there customer’s to have there privacy which is the most important thing when it comes to owning something. Now there being thousands of hackers Verizon should take a stronger step towards privacy before they lose millions of customers. to give credit to Verizon there are not the only company to do that the government controls a lot of things that go on in our society.
I do not agree with the way Verizon handled this situation, because these ‘supercookies’ in the wrong hands could mean more things to avoid from hackers and a faster way to run into internet scams, which I have already become more concerned with lately. The fact that they tried to get away without giving notice is also sketchy to me, especially since AT&T backed out of it already. They seem to be trying to make customers calm down, but they tried too late and lost some privacy integrity for it.
I think that Verizon’s recent use of super cookies is unethical because they are going against their customer’s privacy that they did not agree on when they decided to get Verizon. This data may one day be hacked by someone and get a hold of everyone’s information. Verizon is said to be the best cell phone provider but if I were a customer I would have switched as soon as they installed these super cookies. The way the handled the situation is wrong because they were too late and just lost all of their customers trust.
With the rise of American consumerism, it’s no wonder that corporate companies are finding new ways to advertise us their products and services through every way they can. Back in the day, the beginning of advertising era started with simple TV commercials and product placements in the movies. Now, all of our activities are monitored to find out what service/product to push on us through apps, social media networks, mobile services and etc. I’m sure Verizon is making great money on the information they are collecting about their customers – potential buyers of products and services. As it comes to ethics, advertising and marketing industry is getting more and more intrusive and forcefully implemented into our lives. Corporate companies are making big money, and simple ethics and fundamental rights are left behind.
I personally do feel like it is a violation of my privacy, but it’s the same as using anything else – searching a designer purse on a certain website will reflect in seeing related ads on my social networks. They know what we like before we like it and they will find a way to sell it to us, one way or another. Verizon’s response is nothing new, they will present themselves concerned about their customers, yet there’s always will be a loophole to continue doing what they are doing. Thanks!
Verizon is just one BIG company that was caught using the “supercookies”. There are many other big and small companies that do not care about customers’ privacy just about making money by selling the customers’ information and getting caught. Mobile carriers, Internet, companies, apps, ect. they all monitor our online activities and analyze our interests to send us advertisements. The customers’ information can also land in the hands of a criminal and start sending scams. It is wrong for all this companies to invade our privacy, but here in America we do not have the right to privacy. Verizon said that they listen to their customers’, but when the customer is asking for privacy they are completely ignoring the customer. Companies continue to get away with violating customers’ privacy.
We Have No Privacy!
Verizon’s recent use of the super cookie in my opinion is a huge violation of consumer privacy, and not only do they have the gall to say that they ‘uphold consumer privacy above all else’ but they also think that they’ve done nothing wrong in this incident. The super cookie allows verizon to monitor a consumers web usage, and who knows what else, and use that information for whatever they feel like. In addition to them being able to use this information third parties can access these super cookies, even if you have ‘opted out’, as well as tech savvy individuals to get personal information from your phone to do whatever they want with. This misuse of technology to try and get better ‘data’ from consumers is sickening, and verizon isn’t the only company to try and do this (we all know everyone else wants to as well), and this invasion of privacy should not be tolerated by anyone and be met with strict consequences.
Verizon is among several governmental and corporate entities in the recent past that made moves that seemed to infringe to a big extent the consumer’s and citizen’s right to privacy. The super cookies used by Verizon are probably to intrusive on the one hand, but with the proper tweaking may be helpful to consumers in the future. Verizon should be clear when utilizing their programs connected with the consumer, so maybe they should make an appropriate apology for not telling customers what they are doing in regards to super cookies.