Talking Surveillance Once Again–Know Your Phone Carrier More Precisely
When you log onto the Verizon Precision Market Insights website, the giant catch phrase that jumps out at you in bold red letters is:
“Know your audience more precisely.
Drive your business more effectively.”
Verizon is pulling no punches when it comes to letting advertisers know that they have valuable data- OUR data- and they’re willing to share it. For a price of course. Phone carriers, who see a continued decline in contract subscriber growth and voice calls, are hoping to generate new sources of revenue by selling the data they collect about us. They already collect information about user location and Web surfing and application use (which informs them about such things as travels, interests and demographics) to adjust their networks to handle traffic better. Now they have begun to sell this data.