A spokesperson for AT&T said that the tracking practice was part of a pilot program to improve targeted marketing called “Relevant Advertising.†But it says that the experiment is over, and it has pulled the identifying numbers from their customers’ accounts, although it may still sell the data it’s collected.
User privacy on the Internet has become a hot button issue in both politics and technology in recent years. Following Edward Snowden’s leak of the PRISM program slides, several reports have come out regarding the unlawful tracking of users—including one this week on DOJ-run, aircraft-mounted spy boxes.
Verizon customers are able to disable to opt-out of the tracking service using a form on its website, but that won’t stop their identifying code from being inserted in the URL of websites they visit. Users who want to check to see if they are being tracked by their carrier can visit this website from their mobile device.
