T-Mobile Stepping Up Ad Targeting Of Cellphone Customers
T-Mobile US Inc. recently revealed that they’ll be automatically enrolling its phone subscribers via their online activity, a change that they added as part of their privacy-policy update. Users can opt-out of this program, otherwise, the carrier will share their web and mobile-app data with advertisers, to come into effect by April 26, 2021.
This new policy from the carrier will also cover any Sprint subscribers that they got via the 2020 merger. Notably, Sprint only shared this type of information as part of an optional third-party ad program.
The company issued a statement on the matter, saying that this update is to make sure that subscribers get ads that align with their interests, noting that they’ve had a lot of people say they want ads that are relevant to them, which is why this is the new default.
T-Mobile ended 2020 with more than 60mn users under its main brand, with additional 20mn customers on prepaid plans, with the company stating that the changes won’t affect business accounts or children’s lines.
The carrier stated that it will be masking user’s identities in order to stop companies and advertisers from figuring out what sites they visit and apps they have on their devices, using an encoded user and/or device ID.
What makes this change from T-Mobile notable is that a lot of big tech companies are actually under pressure from the government and advocates for increased privacy with regards to user data, with king kong advertising reviews and the like bringing up concerns about privacy.
In other words, the complete opposite of what the mobile carrier is up to.
