T-Mobile is now selling Android app usage data to advertisers

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iOS users are safe (for now).

https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/27/t-mobile-selling-user-data/

T-Mobile is ramping up its efforts to cash in on the lucrative advertising business. The carrier has officially launched its new “App Insights” program after more than a year in beta. App Insights allows marketers to buy user data directly from T-Mobile, with a particular emphasis on data showing which apps you have on your phone and which apps you regularly use.

Thanks to Apple’s strict privacy requirements, however, iPhone users are (mostly) protected from this…..

This consists of data such as when users open an app, the WiFi networks they join, and what domains they visit in a web browser. The data is then aggregated and combined with other analytics to create “personas,” alternatively known as cohorts. Advertisers can then purchase this information and use it to target people with ads…

iPhone users are safe (for now) from T-Mobile’s creepy new App Insights program. While it seems entirely possible that this changes in the future, it at least seems like Apple technologies like App Tracking Transparency will make it a lot harder for T-Mobile to get any meaningful data…

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks, oldfry

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Barefaced shamelessness as a business model is, according to this latest example, a norm and a deliciously “disruptive” idea to the guiding lights of telecom “services.”

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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How to opt out of T-Mobile’s creepy new data collection program

T-Mobile might call itself the “Un-carrier,” but many of its practices are identical to those of its competitors. For example, T-Mobile is happy to sell your data to third-party marketers. In fact, T-Mobile recently launched a program called App Insights that allows those marketers to buy user data directly from the carrier…

If you own an Android device and have a plan with T-Mobile, you will need to manually opt out. Thankfully, it’s a fairly easy process.

First, download the Magenta Ads Platform Choices app from Google Play. This will allow you to see the companies that are tracking you and the data they are collecting. You can request to delete that data and ask T-Mobile to stop selling your data in the app.

Of course, you might not want to download a T-Mobile app to ask T-Mobile to stop tracking your app usage. If not, you can download AppChoices from the Digital Advertising Alliance instead. AppChoices will also let you opt out of data collection.

Both apps are also available on the App Store, if and when T-Mobile decides that it’s worth the risk to start collecting and selling data from iOS devices…

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks, oldfry

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Alex, sorry for the tardiness on this thread, but got distracted and didn’t see it proper.

Q: I assume this also applies to “Second Level No-Contract Carriers” who USE T-Mumble’s network…?

Also, both apps don’t have the best review scores in the Play store…Magenta having 2.5, and Choices is 3.9. I rarely use anything below 4.5…too many bad “Devs” out there who think they’re Programmers.

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Commentary:…and as far as data mining goes, the US needs to get up to Euro standards on this, and go even farther. (I saw all this coming when Credit Reporting Agencies sprung up about the mid to late 80’s…I am convinced the only reason they exist is to sell YOUR information [and then lose it in a breach]…it’s time they all were reined in, frankly. Privacy in this society is getting moribund.)

But “The only way bad people get ahead is when good people do nothing,” and “Slow progress is the only thing that prevents such progress from becoming NO progress.”

I wish the EFF would sue some of these corporate entities.

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Greenhorn
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"...all the people, all the time..."Peter Ustinov ad-lib in "Logan's Run"

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Makes me even more satisfied with my “stupid” landline.

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wavy

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Data is the new oil and there’s nothing to stop them why wouldn’t they data mine customers?  It’s part of doing business.  There is no way out of lexisnexus and a lot of these brokers.

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There is also action from those in government, the other ones who are supposed to have power. At least not all the power, at least in the USA, does (yet) belong to the new Robber Barons of Silicon Valley and points north and east.

What citizens of a democracy should do about this encroachment of Big Tech on our right to privacy (“not in the Constitution”, as the political hand-maids of the RB like to bleet) is not to accept the RB’s decisions meekly, but to prod those in government, elected ones in particular, to take effective corrective action, and support the actions they take, if these are correct and to the point.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks wrote:

Q: I assume this also applies to “Second Level No-Contract Carriers” who USE T-Mumble’s network…?

We don’t know as T-Mobile hasn’t detailed the scope of data collection and sale with App Insights.
You should ask T-Mobile support and move to another carrier.

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