T-Mobile to Step Up Ad Targeting of Cellphone Customers | Hacker News Reader

T-Mobile to Step Up Ad Targeting of Cellphone Customers

wsj.com

53 pointspedro-guimaraes19 comments

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Quite a bit of discussion yesterday in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26403614.

I use T-Mobile for my data plan on my iPad. Here's my experience:

1. Followed the link from the Gizmodo article to the T-Mobile page to opt-out.

2. Logged in to T-Mobile. They send a 6-digit security code.

3. Forced password reset (due to age). They send another 6-digit security code.

4. New password, so new login. Another 6-digit security code.

5. Finally make it to the opt-out page. Instead of an opt-out checkbox, it's a Material component that is malfunctioning. If you switch it, it looks off. If you switch it again, it turns on briefly then turns off again.

6. I hope that hitting it an odd number of times is "on" even though it looks off.

7. The "Done" button does not work.

How is this okay?

Exact same thing I experienced. Shame on T-Mobile.

dito. Our other account only needed one text message, for mine it took 3 ...and the opt-out did not work until I reloaded the page. Worked fine for the first acc though.

I went through the same flow and was convinced it was expressly designed to make setting one’s preferences impossible.

I also wanted to know which UX/UI designers put together the password reset process, which was pretty infuriating.

Same problem

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26305590

> How is this okay?

FCC or others that can do something in the government don’t care or are otherwise incentivized to look the other way.

Weird. That’s definitely not okay.

Just as a counter anecdote, though, I got the email from T-Mobile explaining the change a couple weeks ago, and I was able to click a link in the email which took me straight to the opt-out page (I did have to log in), and I unchecked all the toggles. It all worked and was not difficult.

So I wonder what broke between the time I did it and the time you did. (I did it on a Mac in Safari so I’m thinking the usual “only works in Chrome” isn’t the answer)

Can’t speak for the original person posting, but my flow was like theirs. They (T-mobile) said that my password was very old and “recommended” I change it. I say “recommended” because there was no way to go through without resetting my password to something new.

I had the same experience with the toggle on my iPhone, except that after toggling it a few times I refreshed the page and _it disappeared entirely_. No idea if I have opted out or not. Truly terrible design.

Can't we just ban online targeted advertising?

Because I'm getting tired of all these stories. When will it stop?

I hope companies will realize that it is all smoke and mirrors organized by the big ad techs and the efficiency of ads is far from what they announce... They are the only ones that win in that scheme, users are victims and companies buying ads are complicit... I'm also really annoyed it pervaded podcasts and videos so much, it become harder amd harder to do the difference between poorly paid actors (whose purpose of the video is first to show ads and then content) and genuine video makers...

Yes, if you think of the reasons against them, then the concept of ads is just crazy except from the perspective of the people selling them.

Here are some reasons, just from the top of my head:

1. Ads are a cause of over-consumption. They make people buy stuff they would otherwise not have bought. So bad for the wallet and bad for the planet too.

2. Ads are annoying. I don't want to read about those new inline skates when I'm browsing the web for work, even if inline skates are something I'd like to purchase in the near future.

3. Ads go against our basic market principles. Not the best product wins, but the one with the biggest marketing budget.

4. Ads are manipulative. An entire branch of psychology is aimed at making people buy more stuff through ads.

5. Children are often a target of ads.

6. Ads drive up prices. If a company uses ads, then its competitors are now forced to use ads too.

7. We don't need ads to find the products we need. If we want to explore our options, we can just visit a store and ask a salesperson. Discoverability is not a real problem, even though ad-tech people will want us to believe that.

8. Privacy ...

9. Even if the efficiency of ads was perfect, consumers are still paying the price for ads through the products they buy. Eventually all that money ends up at ad-tech companies.

10. Ads are a bad monetization model for content-producers. The price you can ask for content is limited to a small range if you are dependent on ads. And remember: the consumer is ultimately paying for ads anyway, so we might as well find a different monetization model for the web. I'm confident it will not be difficult to find one.

11. Ads are a reason why social media platforms make their services addictive. The more time we spend on social media, the more exposure to ads we have.

Etc. etc.

How exactly do advertisers use this data to deliver advertisements? How do they link data from the cellphone company to a specific viewer?

Your provider can roughly know your location. They probably know your age and sex. They know what names you request from their DNS. They can know what you request from an unencrypted website. They can know when you are most actively using their service. If you are using some streaming service they offer to their customers, they can know all about how you use it. They know your IP at any given moment.

All of this together makes for very useful data to advertisers even if they can't obviously link it to any specific viewer. They can group people together based on common characteristics (age group x in city y likes to do this at time z), which the article calls "audience categories". If paying advertisers want to know which category a visiting user likely belongs to, T-Mobile can offer them a way to request category information for a given IP at a given time.

"The company, for its part, promised the Wall Street Journal that it was defaulting to this new setting because “many say they prefer more relevant ads,”

I wonder how "many" actually reach out to carriers to say things like this?

All the robocalls are my biggest concern for example. Reaching out to the carrier about more relevant ads is not fathomable to me.

Simple survey question, perhaps.

“Do you prefer ads that are not relevant to you, or ads that are relevant?”

No third option of no ads whatsoever.

US T-mobile or are other countries also affected?

T-Mobile US. The branding is used in other countries but is the companies themselves are separate.

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