T-Mobile to share customers' data with advertisers unless they opt out | Hacker News Reader

T-Mobile to share customers' data with advertisers unless they opt out

thehill.com

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What really frustrates me is I had already turned off all of the "personalized advertising" toggles I could find prior to this. But I log in to turn these off and the ones I'd touched before were back on.

Increasingly, the "if you're not paying then you're the product" saying is bunk. I am paying, almost $400 per month, for quite a few SIMs to be active on T-Mobile's network yet that's not enough. They have to harvest data about me for even more.

(Don't come at me with the "a company is legally required to take in all of the money it possibly can for its shareholders" bit. Nothing says a company can't make a reasonable business decision to leave money on the table.)

I noticed the same thing: I opted out (both analytics and ads options) a few months ago when I switched to T-Mobile. They since ignored my preferences and opted me back in. Unbelievable. I don't even know when they did this.

Do I now have to keep checking on these settings??

Changing privacy preferences without my knowledge or permission must be made illegal. Total FB like move.

Also, I'm generally tired of this concept of "ads relevant to me" BS.

Me three. I definitely have opted out of analytics and ad tracking before, but I just rechecked my settings in the T-Mobile app and both were enabled. What a slimey thing for them to do.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a better cell carrier in the US?

I rarely hear of people who are happy with their cell carrier regardless of where they're from. In Germany we have three major providers: Telekom (the parent company of T-Mobile), Vodafone and o2 (which belongs to Spanish Telefonica). By all accounts they're all terrible from a customer service perspective.

I just had o2 renew my contract rather than cancel it as I explicitly demanded and it took me a week of regular calls to customer service to get it fixed. I want to switch but it feels like I am between the devil and the deep blue sea.

It's why I get everything on monthly pay as you go only. I'm not sure of the utility of a contract from the consumer perspective. The only thing it does is reduce your flexibility.

It does do another thing: it gives you access to a better deal, generally speaking. But I'm also considering biting that bullet.

fwiw the "better deals" build their value proposition on buying a new phone every two years and smuggle the price of the phone into your tax deductibles. generally the deals are mid- to high-tier priced but have good overall value if you want video on the go and are complicit with beeing a part in the hardware churn industry.

on the other side you get low-end deals w/o contract for <100euro per year (call/sms flatrate plus some data) if you bring your own phone.

Phone purchases outside of a contract are also partially tax deductible if used for your job in Germany. And while many deals are attractive only if you buy a device, not all of them are. Right now I could get a 24 month contract from Vodafone for an average price of 12 EUR/month with 20GB of mobile data.

On the other hand, Lidl Connect (which uses Vodafone's network) charges 12.99 EUR/4 weeks for 6GB of data w/o contract. If you know of any non-contract options that offer significantly better value, please do let me know.

It really depends how you use your data but I never use more than the 10gb that I pay for so having more data isn’t an attraction. I also buy a new (to me) second hand iPhone every 2 years and the phones are perfectly good.

WinSIM is 7.99€/6GB, PremiumSIM 8.99€/6GB, both with month-to-month contracts. Not sure which networks though.

winsim is drillisch, which is just about starting its own network, mostly resells telefonica like most cheap options (incl. premiumsim).

idk but everytime i call someone and the call quality is abysmal, that person is on telefonica network.

I've been happy with Drillisch, but to be fair I call very rarely and even then it's a Telegram/WhatsApp call.

yea, that vodafone deal sounds good value if you need the data.

guess im an outlier because i rarely use more than a few hundred MB a month, so even 12e/mon is "too damn high".

That's fair. I don't always need that much data, but I need it often enough that it's worth having it and not having to worry about it, e.g. when visiting family who don't have internet at home, just working outside or traveling.

I've also been in the situation of not having non-mobile internet at home and I had to deal with insufficient data caps for years, so I may also be biased towards avoiding that in the future.

Germany has a wealth of minor providers, thanks to the MVNO system. No reason whatsoever to be on a major cell provider when a small one is fraction of the price and cancellable monthly instead of yearly.

I've had good results with Ting since 2016, and their telephone and chat customer service in particular has been excellent, but Dish recently bought them to rebrand as "Dish Mobile" and I don't know how that's going to play out.

Their staff on Reddit are denying this applies to them.

I assume by "this" you mean the latest Tmo privacy abuse, and I wouldn't expect it to apply to Ting. They're a Tmo MVNO, but all that means is that they resell Tmo's wireless backhaul; they are under no obligation to otherwise treat their customers the way Tmo does, and in my experience, they don't.

Ting's privacy policy says this about it, and has done since I've been a customer:

"We do not sell or share your information with any third-parties so they can market to you."

Unfortunately, T-Mobile's probably the "least bad" of the Big Three. Maybe one of the smaller carriers running on the Big Three's towers?

I’d recommend looking into Verizon’s discount carrier Visible. I switched a few months ago and am very happy. With “party pay” each member of a party pays their own bill. If your party is 4 or more, you get unlimited calling, text, and data for $25/mo. You can also turn your phone into a hotspot but are limited to 5mbps. Since the network is still Verizon, I still get great service but no longer need to pay a premium price.

I assume any traffic from an MVNO is lower priority than from an Verizon/ATT/T-Mobile payer, simply because in a congestion situation it makes sense to me that the mobile networks would prioritize whoever they get more money from.

I wonder how true that is.

As a Visible customer, I can say the speeds are downgraded. It used to be that if you made it down to 5Mbps, you'd have to call them and your speed will go back up to ~25Mbps. The last few calls have resulted in no speed increases. Time of day doesn't matter so I don't believe their congestion story. They do allow for tethering one device. It's only $40/month and works out well if you just need a slow connection at some location.

That's true, MVNO and prepaid are often deprioritized from the start, while postpaid gets deprioritized only after consuming say 22 GB/month.

And the other trade-off is the "real customers" get to roam on other telco's towers (in some scenarios, depending on partnership agreements), while MVNO and/or prepaid often don't.

I was really happy with Republic Wireless, and would still be using them, though am currently on ATT due to circumstances.

Unfortunately, they are being purchased by DISH network.

I switched from republic to Mint sim (now mint mobile) a few years ago and haven't looked back.

You don’t really have any options because US society heavily favors corporations over human beings. Always has, always will.

I agree, thanks for the help. I am glad I unchecked them again.. As its been said before, we need better privacy laws. We could start with opt in being mandatory for specific services. Start with telecoms. If they were using AI to listen in and process voice 'data'.. I don't know. Sure I would hear the good old, if ya got nothing to hide..

Visible. $25/month and they use the term "Unlimited" literally. No throttling after a certain amount used. 5G included, but it's always throttled at 200Mbps. Verizon network. I normally get 30-40Mbps on 4G.

Only downsides are US/Mexico/Canada only and it's pay as you go but you can't pay more than a week before the bill is due. Autopay is an option.

I have one line for my phone and one I use for home internet.

They do throttle tethering to 5Mbps, but that's easy enough to work around by making the TTL of the device you need full speed match the TTL of the phone by the time it gets there. (68 IIRC) For example, the connection I'm using now is desktop->router->linux box->phone, so I set my desktop TTL to 71.

I have no idea how bad they are with data collection, though.

Visible is owned by Verizon but they try to hide that fact.

From above the fold at visible.com:

"And we're the wireless service that gets better with friends. For as little as $25/mo, you’ll get unlimited data, messages and minutes—powered by Verizon, now with 5G included. Oh, one last thing: Every time you refer a friend, you’ll get a month of service for $5."

That says powered but it's actually owned, not an innocent MVNO

Yuck. I just switched to them from Verizon who I left for scummy business practice. On to the next carrier, AT&T.

AT&T is the absolute worst of the three IMO. Poorest offering, highest cost.

Their prepaid plan is only $25/mo w/ 8gb lte when prepaid the year in advance. That's wayyy cheaper than any of the other big players, and their network/coverage is supposed to be better than t-mobile (and almost as good as verizon).

>That's wayyy cheaper than any of the other big players

T-Mobile has a $15/mo prepaid plan without having to pay a year in advance.

I'm using Mint, but they only do phones, so you can't bundle with stuff like tv or internet

I mean, the same can be said about T-Mobile, which to my knowledge offers neither of those things (unless you count the free Netflix).

T-Mobile currently offers home internet access in some areas, and they have a new streaming video service called TVision.

Huh. Guess I learn something new every day.

They recently introduced their own cable-TV-like streaming service.

Consumer Cellular

The answer seems to be "yes", for several reasons:

1) I also once changed my privacy preferences, but have since been opted back in. 2) I wouldn't have even known to check were it not for Hacker News, which is _not_ how I, nor hopefully anyone, would want to be notified of changes to my/their T-Mobile account. 3) I'm greeted with a generic "Update Operation Failed" when I try to opt any of the lines on my account back out, so now I have even less faith that my changes will stick.

Vote with your $$$. Get a new mobile network.

Hard to do when "# of alternative networks" is tending asymptotically to zero.

It's weird/sad how the land of capitalism is trending towards the land of monopolism.

that is what capitalisim is.

that's what socialism is (well, if they're govt controlled or effectively govt controlled). real capitalism encourages competition, and real entrepreneurs try to discourage it and gain an effective monopoly. that tension is part of the beauty of the whole thing, but when govt approves these mergers with government granted monopolies (i.e., the wireless spectrum), then it all goes to pot very fast.

> real capitalism encourages competition

If you mean “the real system first described as ‘capitalism’”, no, it doesn’t.

If you mean “the abstract, never realized ‘ideal’ system that defenders of capitalism appeal to whenever criticism is levelled at real-world capitalism”, that's harder to assess since the descriptions of that system tend to be both internally inconsistent and incomplete. But nothing usually hear in those encourages competition, usually it's defenders just assert as an article of faith that restriction of competition requires active cooperation of government.

Real capitalism has never been tried!

Under "real" capitalism, the general idea is that monopolization would indeed occur sooner, as the oversight that the government would have would lack to exist.

The Sprint/T-Mobile merger that was proposed a decade ago was denied by the FTC. The recent merger was allowed by the FTC, thus reducing our number of cellular companies.

Switch to Boost mobile, this is an all-new provider.

In the US, Boost is an MVNO reselling T-mobile.

No, it is not. Dish Acquired Boost mobile and is building out its own nationwide network.

This says they are using the T-mobile network: https://about.dish.com/2020-07-01-DISH-enters-retail-wireles...

As part of the T-Mobile/Spring merger T-Mobile agreed to give Boost access to its network while Dish builds its own 5G network. This information is everywhere on the internet.

https://fortune.com/2021/03/04/dish-5g-mobile-cheapest-servi...

Even the article you posted mentions this in the headline. I have no idea why you feel the need to be so disingenuous.

Who's being disingenuous? You both seem to be basically correct. They're new, they're building out, but currently they resell.

Except Facebook had respected every single privacy toggle I ever set when I had my account.

I looked this morning expecting to find an additional toggle and found several settings I thought were toggled off were toggled on. I was thinking this was an oversight on my part until I saw this thread, but now I’m not so sure.

I'm pretty sure Facebook is really careful around this stuff. it's illegal for them to ignore your previously made privacy choices. Facebook can't afford to break the law in such an obvious way.

No, I’m going to give them full kudos here, not the cynical “they have to be careful because reasons” type of kudos, but the full-bodied rich in flavor type of kudos. I created my account in 2007 and would regularly check the privacy settings every time they made a change of any kind up to the point I stopped using and later removed the account over a decade later.

Not one privacy setting that I exerted manual control over ever changed out from under me. Whatever controversies they came under in that time with all the additional accompanying scrutiny, this aspect never changed. Perhaps there are counter examples out there, but that’s how it was for me.

FB is more careful about privacy than 98% of companies their size.

They are careful about privacy when you are careful of your own. There are millions of users who do not change the default settings.

I'd slightly modify that: FB is careful about privacy law, but its business model is about extracting private data.

One example: The NYTimes will sell your name + home address to other advertisers to send you mail. FB does not share your personal information with anyone, it just lets people serve ads to you on the platform based on it.

Do there exist 50 companies their size for that number to make sense?

Maybe recently, but early last decade (2010-ish) they didn't. It's why I haven't had a Facebook account since then. After opting out of sharing my data, I would see my data (namely, my Facebook friends likes) pop up on third-party websites.

All of those asinine social widgets were loaded straight from Facebook.com, so it was less a case of sharing your info as it was if you were signed into Facebook, then those widgets would behave as if they were on Facebook and not a third party site.

I also don’t recall if there were settings for those things, probably not because learning how else Facebook used those widgets to profile me was what prompted me to quarantine Facebook to Chrome, blacklist Facebook’s domains in NoScript and reduce then eliminate my usage.

Communicate with your wallet.

> Increasingly, the "if you're not paying then you're the product" saying is bunk. I am paying, almost $400 per month, for quite a few SIMs to be active on T-Mobile's network yet that's not enough. They have to harvest data about me for even more.

I think the corrected slogan would be:

If you're not paying, you're certainly the product. If you are paying, you still might be.

At this rate, the saying might as well be "if you don't own the company, you're the product". I can't imagine this sort of scumbaggery would fly with a carrier that's, say, a customer-owned cooperative.

who owns any of those companies? the shareholders. are they treated any better?

the issue is the spectrum auctions.. a new carrier can't even get off the ground, even if they were willing to fight through the morass of local and competing regulations to put up towers etc.

> who owns any of those companies? the shareholders. are they treated any better?

They don't have to be, because shareholders and customers are two separate groups when it comes to traditional corporations. And even where they intersect, if dividends and growing stock prices outweigh any personal harm done to themselves as customers, they're going to take the money, every time.

Paying a company doesn’t meaningfully affect their incentives to sell your information or not.

The slogan is correct. But your version is probably easier to interpret correctly by most people.

> Increasingly, the "if you're not paying then you're the product" saying is bunk

It was always bunk, even for free services. Just because a company offers something for free doesn't mean they should get a free pass to abuse users.

It's in this weird corporate apologetic vein where people try to find ways to blame users for a company's wrong doings.

But here we are. We collectively said it's cool to do if the product is free. And that shifted the privacy overton window.

I've never interpreted that saying as a justification. It's a warning. Like, "Beware, if they're not charging you, then they're selling you".

It's not bunk, it's a good reasoning.

The reason it's "increasingly...bunk" now is that the implication--that paying prevents this--is turning out to be wrong.

You're the product, even if you're paying.

> It's a warning.

That was the genesis of the phrase, yes. As a kind of corollary to caveat emptor. Yet it doesn't serve that function in practice, because in context it sneakily redirects blame onto the "emptor".

Take this hypothetical discussion, for example.

> Comment: I think Facebook spying on users is a gross invasion of privacy and we should advocate for better privacy laws.

> Top Reply: If you aren't the customer, you're the product.

In reading that, the reply doesn't read like a warning. It instead shifts the focus away from Facebook being responsible for invading people's privacy, and towards blaming people for using Facebook because they should have known better. Caveat emptor.

It's been an insidious scourge on serious discussions of privacy since its inception.

Yeah, you're right. I've seen that comment exchange too many times, with the smug undertone of "haha, you're the dumbass for having a FB account".

I can confirm this, I had already opt-ed out before. It appears they have reset my choice. What a way to build trust with your customers.

> "if you're not paying then you're the product" saying is bunk

The saying should be, "if the company is not subject to strong consumer protection laws that are enforced with large punishments, you are the product".

It is upsetting, but even more annoying is that I do not see opt-out anywhere. I am basically reliving Arthur Dent's adventure, where company can simply say "It is right over there"( buried under a pile of online forms in a never used obscure platform that requires eye scan to submit a request to respect your information ).

I just confirmed the same thing: all of my lines had silently been reset to sharing data with advertisers.

It's been a bad saying for a long time.

People (and laws, at least in many places) just don't care enough about this stuff. It's just an extra revenue stream, it's there, and it doesn't really cost you much to tap it. Bury some opt-out in some onerous process and you're covered (if even that is required) and people mostly won't complain too much, and will actually change their behavior less. Taking it lets you compete more on things people do care about, or helps you pad the bottom line.

For actual change here we need either regulations with teeth, or consumer behavior to change enough that there's a real cost to doing this stuff. Probably both. To a significant extent there aren't necessarily competitors for people to switch to in a lot of areas that are meaningfully better on privacy, and (relatedly) people often don't actually know or notice what these companies are doing, so it's tough to have "market forces" do much even if people did care.

Every single one of my credit/debit cards has an annual privacy notice. Every time I sign up for a card I call the line and opt-out of the sharing that they are required to let me opt-out of. The setting is retained and while the notices get sent every year, I don't have to opt-out again. Where was the notice even sent for this? Was there one? When I initially saw this reporting I figured 'Ah, they are expanding sales for earlier opted-in customers, better remind others to opt out that care about this'

I share your anger.

I got a text message on February 24:

"T-Mobile: We're updating our Terms & Conditions. To learn more: t-mo.co/terms20"

Interesting, I don't have any message like that on any of my lines. What state are you in, CA?

I've been popping off on Twitter for a bit and it appears T-Mobile extends CCPA law benefits to all 50 states and DC/PR, they dropped this link to me: https://t-mobile.static.services.wirewheel.io/

My guess is they prioritize notifying customers in states that have stronger privacy laws.

I just tried this and it's pretty nuts. First of all, their implementation of reCaptcha just didn't work at all for me in Firefox, and I had to switch to Chrome to even submit the request. (Captchas on CCPA request forms? Seriously?) Then, in order to verify my identity, I was asked to submit a copy of my driver's license or passport plus a current photo within 24 hours (after 24 hours I'd have to start over). I haven't made a ton of CCPA requests (probably 10 or so) but this one is by far the most onerous (not to mention that it seems like it might simply not be possible if you don't have a driver's license or passport)

Consider reporting this to your State and Federal trade commission and privacy enforcement entities. Moving forward it's likely useful to document the activity (screenshots and related, whatever is convenient) then followup to share the documentation with these groups.

How about building a service similar to unsubscribe.me which you give permission to log into each of these accounts every week or so and make sure all of these settings are always kept disabled? Would you pay $20/year for something like that?

Handing login details for all your accounts to a third party seems like that could have no serious repercussions to you?

same here - I had to disable them again.

The last time I checked this was ~2 years ago when it was brought up in another forum (reddit:/r/tmobile).

So I am curious how long my lines have been sending data to tmobile's data warehouse

If you don't pay, you're the product.

If you do pay, you're a product with disposable income.

Keep track of this, this is amazing data for a nice class action lawsuit.

Unfortunately, T-Mobile, like every other mobile phone provider, has a mandatory binding arbitration clause. It does come with an opt-out provision but requires that someone have opted out within 30 days of the first time they opened their account. If a subscriber did not opt-out back then, even if the terms and conditions subsequently change, the agreement is very specific that a new opt-out opportunity is not created.

I opted-out when I signed up a decade ago but I have no proof of having done that other than a website I barely remember visiting. They do not display my opt-out status anywhere and customer service claims they have no access to know whether or not I did.

It might not apply in cases like this where they are actively changing what you are setting up as your profile settings.

I.e., in their arbitration clause they clearly agreed to give users some control over some privacy settings. In changing your settings they are in breach of the clause not you.

This clause bit Patreon IIRC hard, when a mass of people made arbitration complaints in place of a class action. It turns into a financial DDoS pretty fast.

A similar thing happened to Uber.

Speak with your wallet and move to a different provider.

Americans should be made aware of how much cheaper it is in e.g. Europe. Companies are robbing us because most people think this is normal

defacto monopolies in the US is robbing basically everyone there.

The land owners have realized that the working people generating a savings is leaving money on the table.

‘Although the saying tells us “If it’s free, then you are the product,” that is also incorrect. We are the sources of surveillance capitalism’s crucial surplus: the objects of a technologically advanced “and increasingly inescapable raw-material-extraction operation. Surveillance capitalism’s actual customers are the enterprises that trade in its markets for future behavior.’

Excerpt From The Age of Surveillance Capitalism Shoshana Zuboff

Are you in the EU? It sounds illegal.

EDIT: Oh I didn't know T-Mobile was active in the US too.

I'm with Tele2 NL (which is just a sub-brand of T-Mobile NL) for my phone service, and I do believe the following settings were on before I turned them off:

- Receive advertisements from Tele2

- Receive advertisements from third parties

- Personal advice [based on my usage data]

- Relevant content [ads based on my personal data]

- Usage of location data [to send me ads]

- Usage of my data for market research purposes

This is what happens in capitalism.

> Nothing says a company can't make a reasonable business decision to leave money on the table.

I say if you make the decision to leave money on the table, you'll be fired and replaced with someone who won't. If you own the company, you'll eventually sell it to someone who got the loan to buy you 100% based on a promise to immediately pick up the money you've been leaving on the table.

From Mac Rumors:

T-Mobile customers can opt out of the advertising program through the T-Mobile app or the T-Mobile website. In the app, access the "MORE" tab, select Advertising & Analytics, and toggle off "Use my data to make ads more relevant to me."

On the website(https://www.t-mobile.com/signin), choose "My Account," select "Profile, Privacy, and Notifications, then choose Advertising "& Analytics. From there, turn the opt-in toggle off. Sprint users can change the setting through the Sprint website. Select "Visit My Account," choose "Preferences" and then scroll down to "Manage advertising and analytics preferences." From here, turn off "Use my data to make ads more relevant to me."

Took me a few reloads throughout this process

There are actually two direct links.

I am prepaid and was able to visit the links directly to bypass their decision to break the website for us for no technological reason.

This one should redirect you to the right page after you log in to turn off two of the "features".

https://my.t-mobile.com/account/profile/privacy_notification...

But "for some reason" there is an entirely separate page for "Do Not Sell my Personal Information".

https://www.t-mobile.com/content/t-mobile/corporate/privacy-...

I can confirm that despite being a T-mobile customer continuously for 10 years and definitely repeatedly turning this nonsense off that it was all back on (and do-not-sell was turned back off, I assume "on" means "do not sell" but obviously it's an intentionally deceptive pattern).

Combined with their decision to force prepaid customers to suddenly call them every stupid time that you want to check anything or change anything when before it worked perfectly fine on their website... I'm thinking T-Mobile is getting Sprintified and am very sad that it really doesn't seem likely that I'll be able to keep using them. I used to think they were the best, back when they were trying...

They were always a bit warty, if you ask me.

I got stuck with a $300 cancellation fee with T-Mobile after using their Starbucks Wifi service. When I told them I had specifically signed up for only one month's service, I was told over the phone that they had "decided that I wanted a one year contract instead."

The reason I even bothered to pay for wifi at Starbucks? This was before the 'free wifi' was common and standard. Almost 20 years ago. I was homeless and needed an internet connection to get things done during the day on my laptop before I found another place to stay.

The only option I was given was to continue using the Starbucks/TMobile Wifi service or pay an early termination fee. The rep said "since you have one nearby, I don't see why you couldn't keep using it."

The closest Starbucks, after I relocated, was a 30 minute drive. No public transportation. And I didn't have a car.

All carriers are bastards.

All I can say is that the only real options at the time seemed to be T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon. Sprint had a tiny network without reasonable coverage.

It was a bad choice, but still an obvious one. They were infinitely better than the others even if they weren't as good as say, Iceland.

Lack of competition doesn't help this market...

I was a Sprint customer and now have TMobile thanks to the merger. Sprint wasn't customer heaven, but TMobile is in fact much, much worse. In just three months, I've a had to deal with:

* A phone turn in where they did not credit my account. That cost me $200.

* A defective phone where the screen stopped working (no damage) about 60 days after purchase. Getting the phone fixed was a nightmare.

* I've been told "sorry, if you don't have the add-on insurance, we can't service your phone. You'll have to buy a new one" (the phone was 2 months old)

* I've been asked to "step outside" by a store employee when trying to get my phone serviced at a local service center after support sent me there.

* I was also told that they couldn't help because I was a "Sprint Contract" even though I bought my new phone at a TMobile store, switched to a TMobile SIM card (at the sales rep's reccommendation) and bought after the merger was official.

* It took 3 hours on the phone with their business services people to get my phone exchanged. The person who helped me was actively looking for a new job (I'm in the HR Tech space)

It's a dystopian hellscape at TMobile and I cannot wait until my contract is up. And I'd suggest that anyone avoid TMobile like the hellspawn of coronavirus, ebola and your favorite STD. I genuinely feel bad for the employees. At every step they were in fear of losing their job for the slightest action that was against policy.

It doesn't seem to work for prepaid T-Mobile customers.

The menus at prepaid.t-mobile.com are slightly different, and don't seem to have the necessary options.

Prepaid customers definitely seem to be second class customers at T-Mobile.

First, the T-Mobile app doesn't work for us. It says "Sorry we're not ready for you yet. We're working on improving your app experience" and tells you to use the website. It's been doing that for several years now.

Second, they don't support paying with Apple pay.

And now, it looks like we don't get the same privacy options that postpaid customers get.

I don't understand why they have this separation.

I am prepaid and was able to get these to work.

https://my.t-mobile.com/account/profile/privacy_notification...

https://www.t-mobile.com/content/t-mobile/corporate/privacy-...

For me, I can login when I go to that first link, and then it redirects to an error page. If I try going to the link again, it says it needs to verify my and asks to send a code by text or email. I picked email, got the code, entered it--and it tells me to enter a valid code.

Were you ever T-Mobile postpaid? I was, and it appears that their prepaid and postpaid systems are partly shared, partly separate. I suspect that this leads to parts of their site getting confused.

I get this url https://my.t-mobile.com/account/profile/prepaid/privacy_noti...

which just jams.

This url from elsewhere in the thread works. or at least loads. I have no idea if it actually does anything.

https://my.t-mobile.com/account/profile/privacy_notification...

It is interesting that the one that you say works is the exact first link in my post. So it didn't work but then did work?

Sounds like they've got some screwy cookie and redirect stuff going on. For full context, I logged in to my account, and then clicked on those links (which I still had to log in again for, but maybe it made a difference?).

I was, and I am pretty sure I had to create a new account when I switched.

I did have to enable some cookies... maybe try a less secure browser?

Yup, it's not just you. I've been receiving that same sorry message in the app ever since I switched from T-Mobile regular to T-Mobile prepaid last year.

During the switch, I had to provide all my information all over again even though I was with T-Mobile for many years. The customer service rep said it's because they are "two different systems".

Even though it is supposedly "two different systems", they still manage to interact in annoying ways.

First, you can't use the same email to sign up with the prepaid system that you used for the postpaid system. I'm not sure what people do who only have one email address.

Second, assuming you keep the same phone number when you switch from postpaid to prepaid, once you login with your second email to you prepaid account and associate that phone number with it, you can no longer login to the postpaid account.

If you try to login to the postpaid account by phone number, it knows that is no longer a T-Mobile postpaid number, so it does not work. If you try to login by email, that works, but then you get stuck at a screen asking you to provide your T-Mobile phone number (and it means T-Mobile postpaid phone number).

Frankly, if I had known this beforehand I probably would not have went with T-Mobile prepaid. I probably would have went with Mint, which is a T-Mobile MVNO. My T-Mobile prepaid plan is $15/month with 2 GB of data. If you pay for a year at a time, Mint has a $15/month plan with 4 GB of data.

The only reason I went with T-Mobile is I assumed that since I was going from T-Mobile to T-Mobile, there would be no need to change SIMs and port my number. I'd just be billed differently.

Nope, new SIM and a number port.

Mint also handles data better than T-Mobile as far as I can see.

I've got WiFi at home, and most of the places I go to when not home either have their own free WiFi or there is an Xfinity hotspot near which is free to me since I have Xfinity internet, so almost never use even a gig of cellular data.

But it is nice to have as a backup. Last summer, for example, there was an accident that messed up lines on a nearby utility pole, taking out my internet. It took a couple days for Comcast to get that fixed and I relied on my mobile phone hotspot.

As far as I can see with my T-Mobile prepaid...once I hit 2 GB in a month, that's it. There doesn't seem to be any way to purchase additional data. With Mint, you can by extra data.

In short, T-Mobile prepaid is essentially like a T-Mobile MVNO, but not a very good one (no mobile app, can't add extra data on demand), and due to their systems sharing some data with T-Mobile postpaid, switching to them is harder for T-Mobile postpaid customers than it is for customers of any other carrier.

> I'm not sure what people do who only have one email address.

A bit of a tangential point, but most systems ain't smart enough to know that foo@example.com and foo+bar@example.com are aliases of one another. Handy trick for keeping spam isolated; if you start getting unsolicited marketing emails from foo+tmobile@example.com, then it strongly suggests who was naughty with your personal info :)

> smart enough

Isn't this just a Gmail thing? It isn't necessarily an alias for any given email provider.

It ain't exclusively a Gmail thing - other mailservers support it, too - but Gmail was indeed an early adopter of it, I believe.

I have a prepaid T-Mobile account that was reporting the wrong name for caller ID. They flat out refused to fix it because apparently managing telecoms is too difficult for them.

I was able to make the election for my prepaid account.

Direct link for anyone lazy like me :)

https://www.t-mobile.com/account/profile/line-selector/adver...

Thanks for that! I tried logging in and navigating to the page, but kept getting errors at the "Privacy & Notifications" page (maybe because I'm on an old pre-paid plan?). That direct link worked fine, though. (Though who knows if it will actually take effect, or mysteriously lose my preferences.)

There should, and I realize this is a bit pitchfork-EY, a limit on number of clicks to find one of these opt outs.

Agreed. Even with the nicely supplied shortcut URL it was still 16 clicks for me to turn everything off for 4 lines.

I have had these off for a couple of years now since it was talked about on a non-official subreddit for tmobile.

They better not re-enable it in April.

EDIT: I just checked again, those fuckers re-enabled it on my account

This setting is per-line as well; I had several lines to opt out.

I tried over 10 reloads and every time I get

    "We are currently having trouble with your request. Please wait a few minutes and try again."

So much for T-Mobile respecting my privacy.

Edit: That error appears 100% of the time. To workaround, login as usual, then go to https://www.t-mobile.com/account/profile/line-selector/adver...

thanks for the workaround. The privacy settings edit page is the one and only thing on their whole website that is "broken" for me...

John Legere, who was responsible for T-Mobile's norm-shattering "uncarrier" direction, resigned last year after the Sprint merger went through.

Now that T-Mobile isn't a scrappy underdog anymore, I think we can expect more American business-as-usual customer exploitation from them.

I really liked Legere as a CEO. I think he did more to advance consumer benefits in the telco industry than anyone else in the last 10 years. His efforts made Verizon and AT&T have to move, at least a little from their cushy duopoly position

Yeah, they were amazing... ten years ago when I started using them. Now they block my wifi calling for no technological reason, opt me in to invasive monitoring, sell my information, force me to call them to change anything about my account because they broke their own previously working website to make being pepaid harder...

getting really hard to justify sticking around.

I was a customer of theirs for years and he would respond on Twitter to random customers (me included, a couple times). Seemed like a really great leader.

Neville Ray is great too and is probably the C-level that's been there the longest. Unlike Sprint, T-Mobile has usually made fairly pragmatic technology choices and usually beats their build-out estimates (unheard of at any of the other majors). He's also nice on Twitter and I've had a few exchanges with him like asking if they were ready for the last leap second, and he once dispatched a COLT (cell on light truck) to support the network when we had a large festival some summers back after I asked.

> Now that T-Mobile isn't a scrappy underdog anymore, I think we can expect more American business-as-usual customer exploitation from them.

I feel like T-Mo is a case study in why allowing this degree of market consolidation is terrible for consumers. When they struggled to compete on coverage, they came up with some "innovative" (at the time) strategies to compete, such as unbundling the phone from the plan, selling unlocked devices, prepaid plans with no fixed terms or surprise cancellation fees, and embracing BYOD. They were the only carrier doing this stuff at the time which is why I signed up with them then.

With only three carriers remaining, there aren't any scrappy underdogs trying new things, and there's no room for any new companies to come in and disrupt them as the moat is now so massive in this sector. The only thing that would have an impact is for the US government to break up these megaconglomorates, which of course will never happen.

John is also a great CEO keynote speaker (kind of like jobs). Watch his uncarrier keynotes on youtube if you're interested.

Not that this makes it right, but AT&T does something similar. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Verizon did the same. But it is sad when your network provider just decides to sell everything they know about you and who you’re talking to.

https://www.att.com/legal/terms.enhancedRelevantAdvertising....

And even though they call it opt-in, everyone is automatic enrolled in a form of this unless they opt-out.

> All customers are automatically in the basic Relevant Advertising program, but we still give you a choice. You can opt out of the Relevant Advertising program at www.att.com/cmpchoice.

> AT&T automatically enrolls wireless subscribers in a basic ad program that pools them into groups, and Verizon similarly pools subscriber data before sharing with advertisers, the Journal reported.

The article even mentions exactly that...

Yep. Even with this incident, T-Mobile is still most likely the least bad of the bunch. Which is depressing to think about.

As I mentioned in a cousin comment, it seems like we're overdue for a cellular cooperative, much like how credit unions work. It's becoming increasingly apparent that traditional corporations can't be trusted to act in the best interests of their customers, especially when they exist as natural monopolies.

“We’ve heard many say they prefer more relevant ads so we’re defaulting to this setting,” a T-Mobile spokeswoman told the paper.

Can a company be legally liable for this kind of lie?

Sadly, probably not. They likely asked "hand-selected" people about ads and went with it, similar to products being "doctor recommended" when the manufacturer asked one doctor.

Define "many".

Get three people to say it, and they're probably legally covered. Hell, get Management to say that they prefer more relevant ads, with the sideline commentary being "because we can sell your data" and it's a paraphrasing, but it's not untrue.

Experts recommend... Critics say... Customer survey results indicated...

Give me the raw stats or it's bunkum.

They're what I've seen Wikipedia editors call 'weasel words' [1] when there's no definite source for a statistic yet someone is attempting to convey an air of authority.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

"Do you want ads that are more relevant to you?" vs "Do you want unknown third party companies to track your online activity to provide you with ads they believe you'll engage with more often?"

I swear there are entire industries that exist to obscure the elephant in the room.

Doesn't the CCPA protect customers in California from having their browsing data used for ad targeting without an explicit opt-in?

edit: to answer my own question, no it does not. I'm thinking of GDPR.

Whoops. Easy mistake to make if you know how to expand CCPA. Well, nothing to do here I guess. We'll need to let the market figure this out I guess. `shrug`

... /s

“We’ve heard many say they prefer more relevant ads so we’re defaulting to this setting,”

To the extent that anyone wants ads, of course they want more relevant ads. It's a truism.

But that doesn't mean that they want to trade their privacy for such things. And this is T-mobile's duplicity.

> “We’ve heard many say they prefer more relevant ads so we’re defaulting to this setting,” a T-Mobile spokeswoman told the paper.

How many?

They run surveys that ask questions like "do you prefer advertising that appeals to you? or "are you more likely to make a purchase based on relevant advertising?" People assume that the questions are asking broadly "do I want to see a car ad vs a diaper ad?" That is not the case – these are hyper targeted ads based on their usage patterns gathered from their digital devices. Often times, these surveys also include questions that lead users to respond with "I believe in value exchange between ads and the content I consume." Obviously marketers, ad tech, publishers, etc run with these studies as a panacea for the work they output.

"We had a very scientific study where we asked people if they prefer to have to watch ads that are irrelevant to them, or which might possibly be relevant to them."

(imagined quote from the marketing team meeting)

All the people on the adtech team.

There must be a whole civilization of ad-loving people, maybe they live on Mars, maybe on the dark side of the Moon. The only people aware of their existence are Google, FB and co. They inundate these companies requesting better and more targeted ads. "I'm paying for your services, i want creepier ads!" they complain. (Yes, FB has figured out they can charge them money)

I would honestly be okay with a toggle that lets me see multiple filter bubbles and echo chambers.

"here's YOUR tailored ads for the three companies in your niche that you already knew about" (this is what currently happens to me)

and

"here is the default unfiltered ad space so you can stay connected with whats happening in the world"

and

"here is somebody else's filter bubble, ssssh! they don't know that people don't think like them nor that people have completely different news and ads and explanations in their own filter bubbles!"

Two many.

I feel like US is really behind on federal ePrivacy and personal data regulations.

Seems like CCPA is a step in the right direction but should be implemented on federal level.

The US introduced the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act back in 1998, and the response for most websites was to put in an age gate requiring a birthday where you're at least 13 or 14.

I wonder why at the time congress scoped this bill to just children, rather than thinking about online privacy for all consumers.

COPPA is about the fact that 9-year-olds can’t meaningfully consent to privacy policies. Adults can, and can even do so on behalf of their children under COPPA, it’s just that most sites would rather ban children than deal with parent signature forms.

> COPPA is about the fact that 9-year-olds can’t meaningfully consent to privacy policies.

And 13 year olds can? I'm probably preaching to the choir, but it seems like COPPA set the bar too low.

And further, it's pretty straightforward to be COPPA compliant - even with toddlers using your website - if you, you know, don't collect personal information to begin with. Again, probably choir-preaching...

I most often remember seeing this invoked over email address, where email is intrinsic to the site’s functionality.

The data brokering industry is huge. They don't want data privacy laws to be passed and they make campaign contributions to make sure the status quo is maintained. The government likes this situation too because it lets them bypass 4A.

> I feel like US is really behind on

...everything that matters

Can we please not turn HN into reddit?

This was not a reddit-esque comment. But a real one that could actually be discussed like adults on HN. I believe my statement/comment.

You expect adults to gather around and discuss your 3 word, massively generalized post? Ok.

How many word would you like? I think you understood what my point was, as for it was clear and succinct. Did you want bullet points and references? America is currently largely a failed state (in terms of future global power), has the most funded military that cannot win wars but serves as a jobs program and as result is a large part of its own economy. A medical system that is expensive but cannot meet the needs of its people and also has a non-functioning government however it is a country with a lot economic inertia. This inertia will be a long slow deceleration that will lead it to fate similar of England.

> America is currently largely a failed state

See, that is exactly what I was talking about when I said please don't turn reddit into HN (even considering your unfalsifiable parenthetical)

As a discussion forum I think we can discuss anything as long as it meets the guidelines. [1] Sorry you have had a bad experience on Reddit but please do not bring that negativity here.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Everything that matters to the working class*

Our imperialism, weapons tech, and exploitation of the working class are top notch. The amount banks take from people with no money in overdraft fees alone should be cause for a revolution.

Their privacy policy on iOS is also blatantly misleading. They claim to not collect any identity-linked location info, and also claim that your purchases are somehow not tied to your identity, both of which are demonstrably false.

https://twitter.com/thesquashSH/status/1369089325040828421

Does this apply to users on T-Mobile's network via MVNOs, or only customers who subscribe directly to T-Mobile?

The opt-out applies only to T-Mobile, the data collection applies to everything connected to the T-Mobile network.

Seconding - I should call Ting and see.

If Ting is using the T-mobile network then I'd assume T-mobile is still selling that data, even if not as granular as direct app tracking.

Their staff on Reddit deny it and claim we are bound by different TOS

I was a Sprint customer before the merger, and I received this notice via email a few days ago. It included links that were supposed to allow me opt out of my data to be sold, but none of the links worked with my Sprint login, so I seem to have no opt-out option. Blah.

I was previously opted out of such things, and the merger appears to have opted me back in with no functional recourse.

> “We’ve heard many say they prefer more relevant ads so we’re defaulting to this setting,” a T-Mobile spokeswoman told the paper.

Am I in a bubble when I find that completely foreign to my experience or that of my social group? Do average customers actually answer on surveys that they would prefer more relevant ads? Or is T-Mo just flat-out lying through their teeth here?

I imagine these surveys just tend to omit the required consequences of each choice. E.g. asked "Do you want to pay less in tax or more in tax?", most people would likely answer "less", but if you outlined all the things they'd lose with lower taxes, a lot of those votes would flip.

In this case, I imagine people said that they'd prefer more relevant ads (I know I do), but then T-Mobile used that as justification to do all sorts of other things that weren't asked about.

Generally these surveys compare that to paying more to not have it (even though so far except for AT&T fiber I have yet to actually see a service charge more when you opt out).

This sort of thing drives me crazy. It's so pervasive that it's impossible for users to keep up with opting out of everything.

All one can really do is treat corporations adversarially and assume the worst. It's crazy that I need to run a VPN from my home since my own ISP would use deep packet inspection (aside from logging DNS entries) to profile my household for advertising purposes.

Recommendations: - Mullvad: they take cryptocurrency, account ID is a randomly generated number that can't be recovered, no logging, support Wireguard, reasonably fast, works well on mobile - Cloudflare WARP: centralized corp but they don't sell customer data and aren't incentivized to do so (disclaimer: for now), really damn fast since you're probably hitting Cloudflare sites from your ISP anyway, they use Wireguard (but in a custom setup), works really well on mobile

"Fuck the ethics, most people won't even find out" - T-Mobile

I'm sure the average consumer reads the OP headline and doesn't care at all. "Great! I love buying dropshipped crap from instagram ads!" they will say.

You need to preface it with "Many T-Mobile Managers say"

Seems every company becoming a bunch of dicks lately.

Because they're incentivized to maximize profit, even at the customers' expense.

If only they were incentivized to cater to their customers exclusively, and if only the customers were the shareholders and therefore were able to hold the companies accountable for their behavior.

If only the essential utilities the public relied upon were owned by the public.

We are moving from a high trust to low trust society.

So what can people reasonably do anymore? As others have mentioned, even when you do due diligence and turn off settings, companies are now flipping settings back. What recourse is left now?

Pathetic that this is even happening. Is there any trustworthy cell provider now? I’d switch over this but T-Mobile was the one least complicit in NSA spying.

Is it too late for governments to legislate against the sale of customer data?

Legally make it opt-in rather than opt-out, as well as including provision for customers to request details of what data related to them has been sold to which companies.

It feels as if it's too late because the economic base of companies that exist purely as leeches off collected and processed personal data is large enough that it could cause economic problems for the jurisdiction brave enough to attempt such legislation. ie. there's too much money already in the pot for the government to force players to fold their hands.

It's amazing that coming off of the heals of their 4th customer data breach in 4 years in January[1], they have decided their priority should be selling their customer's data. It guess the Sprint merger put them over the edge and finally allowed them take their rightful place next the AT&T and Verizon in the toilet.

[1] https://threatpost.com/t-mobile-another-data-breach/162703/

Anyone have a link where I can opt out?

Here's the "Do not sell my data" form:

https://www.t-mobile.com/content/t-mobile/corporate/privacy-...

There is more opt-out links with different degree of opt-out on the top of the privacy policy:

https://www.t-mobile.com/privacy-center/our-practices/privac...

Just attempted to change settings via "Advertising & Analytics" on the mobile app.

Error: "Looks like we got our wires crossed"

From https://www.t-mobile.com/privacy-center/our-practices/privac...

https://www.t-mobile.com/content/t-mobile/corporate/privacy-...

https://t-mobile.static.services.wirewheel.io/

https://www.t-mobile.com/dns?brand=Magenta&site=Sell_App&ori...

Thank you for sharing the article. I had no idea that garbage was turned on since I never download the t-mobile app. I did and there it was. Looks like I'd turned off anything else to minimize t-mobile spying. I'm happy with their service, at least in my area. I'm still holding on to my iphone X until 5g really makes sense. I haven't seen or heard any friends with it say OMG look at this. Phones are a utility I don't need ads on there as well.

Guess it's time to opt out of T-Mobile entirely. Bummer, switching is pure overhead. :/

These days I use a Fi data-only SIM in a battery-powered travel router that runs a VPN, and only ever use my mobile devices via Wi-Fi to that, anyway. I use throwaway gmail accounts with Google Voice for stuff that still insists on PSTN phone numbers.

I kept my T-Mo SIM with my decade-old phone number (in a $19 dumbphone, no less!) but it might be time to abandon that now.

Which router do you use? I've been considering this solution for a while. It seems inconvenient, but I might get used to it to avoid this fuckery.

GL.iNet GL-E750

I keep forgetting it's on in my bag when I come home, then it's dead when I go to leave the house again. Fortunately I have a USB outlet in my car; I don't keep SIM cards in any other devices now (other than my dumbphone for SMS).

I saw this today and am unhappy with the news. I'm on a Pixel, but my wife is on an iPhone. We're both on Wi-Fi 90%+ of the time. Since I'm heavily invested in the Google ecosystem, potentially switching to Fi just looks better and better. I hear it even works on the iPhone with some limitations. We're not huge data users, so having truly unlimited data, while nice, is not really required.

GoogleFi still uses the T-Mobile network. I suspect that without a way for MVNOs to have a way for their customers to log into the T-Mobile page to opt-out, the data sharing is still in effect.

On MintSim, myself.

I doubt this. Presumably if this was true Google Fi would have to provide at least some notice of this? Especially since T-Mobile had to update their privacy policy before rolling this out.

Also Google Fi has no incentive to permit this. (Assuming they get a say)

You make a good point. I'm also wondering if T-Mobile allows Fi customers to be de-prioritized or is Google big enough that T-Mobile wouldn't dare. I'll look into MintSim. Thanks for the tip.

Does this apply to T-mobile service outside the U.S.?

This is motivation to use encrypted DNS on your phone.

Sniffing your DNS queries is a super simple way to build a detailed advertising profile of you and your browsing history. And DNS is unencrypted by default on almost all phones.

By encrypting your queries, it becomes much more challenging for T-Mobile to determine exactly what services you’re using.

Tracker Control on Android allows changing DNS servers, but you could also use 1.1.1.1 from Cloudflare, Mozilla VPN and others.

So to turn this off log into your account in a browser.

Account on the main bar > Profile and Settings > Privacy and Notifications > Advertising & Analytics > then click on each line and turn it off. reply

Question - I have a Droid LG V20 , think the device is from 2017.

Never updated. Running 8.0

When I run the Tmobile app (wanted to peek at settings), its asking me to update.

Should I do it ? Am i safe if i dont update this monster to suck my data ?

For what it’s worth I’ve reported their non functioning website/and changing my opt-out preferences to the fcc and my state attorney general, not expecting anything, but it was cathartic.

t-mobile has been using this as their default option for some time now (more than a year?). I recall seeing a post on /r/tmobile talking about it - I'll see if I can dig it up

EDIT: more than 2 years ago!

https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/ahio9n/tmobile_dat...

I definitely opted out of this already. I even contacted their support about concerns over the way they sell location data upon opt-in (hint: their opt-in requirement for sharing your location was completely up to the location aggregator and the end customer buying location data to enforce. eg, not enforced at all).

The main point I made was that this was not able to be opted out of via their preferences, and that having opted out of all possibilities, my cell number was still revealing location data when entered into one of those aggregation services.

They had me snail mail a letter to a PO box. I never got a reply.

Yet today _all_ of their privacy settings have been reset to opt-in status. And I still can't stop them from giving my location to anyone who tells their API "Yes, I have his permission".

I opted out 3 seconds after I got the email from them, and took the opportunity to also disable other marketing options that I hadn't noticed before.

Opt out should be illegal. It’s never in the users favor.

There are some things that I wish were opt out, for instance organ donation.

I still think that needs to be opt in. I am an organ donor because I don’t care what happens to my body when I die, but I know a lot of people that do care and it should still be their decision.

Not directed at you jbluepolarbear, asking questions to the void.

It's an interesting philosophical topic.

But is it your body once you're dead? Do you even get to care at that point? What literal difference does it make to you, after death? What are you going to do about it?

I've been able to capture brief moments in which I've been able to grasp the completeness of the lack of agency that death brings. It's simultaneously chillingly horrifying and freeing.

once organ donation ist opt-out, it is very hard to deny the economical incentive to "not find the opt-out", withold treatment or prematurely declare death especially for patients of lower status/rank/credit. i don't think this is a path any scociety would want to go.

I'd been procrastinating on running a VPN on my phone, and this got me moving. Thanks, T-Mobile.

this is about the metadata (which cell your phone is connected to and when) not your traffic per se, so vpn wont help you at all

Wait, what? They have always been sharing data with advertisers. What, exactly, is the change?

Would using a VPN (like WARP) prevent T-mobile from collecting any information?

I tried to opt out, and it wouldn't let me to.

I've also tried to email their privacy team using the email address they have provided, as I couldn't opt out (it threw an error), and it bounced right away with a message indicating that they were not monitoring this email address.

This needs to be illegal.

comcast does too

Their opt-out is here: https://www.xfinity.com/privacy/opt-out

Somebody on Ars linked to opt-outs for AT&T/VZ/MVNOs here: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/t-mobile-will-te...

A 500M-1billion fine. Those fuckers will only behave until one of those shenanigans can make them broke.

This would bother me a bit but 2 points:

a)i'm not on t-mobile

and b) they've already been hacked, your data is out there regardless.

At no point has "web and mobile app data" been listed as something accessed in any breach.

yet

Yikes I'd dump T-mobile if I had it... I wonder if I'm too late for puts.

This will make them more competitive. On what world does it make sense to buy a highly levered, decaying, short term downside hedging instrument here.

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