[Vision2020] Somebody’s Already Using Verizon’s ID to Track Users

[Kenneth Marcy]

Somebody’s Already Using Verizon’s ID to Track Users

Twitter is using a newly discovered hidden code that the telecom 
carriers are adding to every page you visit – and it’s very hard to opt 
out.

http://www.propublica.org/article/somebodys-already-using-verizons-id-to-track-users 


Twitter's mobile advertising arm enables its clients to use a hidden, 
undeletable tracking number created by Verizon to track user behavior on 
smartphones and tablets.

Wired <http://www.wired.com/2014/10/verizons-perma-cookie/> and Forbes 
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/10/29/the-privacy-lowdown-on-verizon-and-atts-permacookies/> 
reported earlier this week that the two largest cellphone carriers in 
the United States, Verizon and AT&T, are adding the tracking number to 
their subscribers' Internet activity, even when users opt out.

The data can be used by any site – even those with no relationship to 
the telecoms -- to build a dossier about a person's behavior on mobile 
devices – including which apps they use, what sites they visit and for 
how long.

MoPub, acquired by Twitter in 2013, bills itself as the "world's largest 
mobile ad exchange." It uses Verizon's tag to track and target cellphone 
users for ads, according to instructions for software developers 
<https://dev.twitter.com/mopub-demand/overview/openrtb> posted on its 
website.

Twitter declined to comment.

AT&T said that its actions are part of a test. Verizon says it doesn't 
sell information about the demographics of people who have opted out.

This controversial type of tracking, known in industry jargon as header 
enrichment 
<http://www.juniper.net/techpubs/en_US/junos-mobility12.1/topics/concept/httphe-mobility-overview.html>, 
is the latest step in the mobile industry's quest to track users on 
their devices. Google has proposed a new standard for Internet services 
that, among other things, would prevent header enrichment.

People using apps on tablets and smartphones present a challenge for 
companies that want to track behavior so they can target ads. Unlike on 
desktop computers, where users tend to connect to sites using a single 
Web browser that can be easily tracked by "cookies," users on 
smartphones and tablets use many different apps that do not share 
information with each other.

For a while, ad trackers solved this problem by using a number that was 
build into each smartphone by Apple and Google. But under pressure from 
privacy critics, both companies took steps to secure these Device IDs, 
and began allowing their users to delete them, in the same way they 
could delete cookies in their desktop Web browser.

So the search for a better way to track mobile users continued. In 2010, 
two European telecom engineers proposed an Internet standard 
<http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-uri-acr-extension-00.txt> for telecom 
companies to track their users with a new kind of unique identifier. The 
proposal was eventually adopted as a standard 
<http://technical.openmobilealliance.org/Technical/technical-information/release-program/current-releases/rest-netapi-acr-v1-0> 
by an industry group called the Open Mobile Alliance.

Telecoms began racing to find ways to use the new identifier. Telecom 
equipment makers such as Cisco 
<http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/wireless/ps11035/ps11047/ps11072/solution_overview_c22-606224_ns973_Networking_Solution_Solution_Overview.html> 
and Juniper 
<http://www.juniper.net/techpubs/en_US/junos-mobility12.1/topics/concept/httphe-mobility-overview.html> 
began offering systems that allow the identifiers to be injected into 
mobile traffic.

In the spring of 2012, AT&T applied for a patent 
<https://www.google.com/patents/US20130273886> for a method of inserting 
a "shortlived subscriber identifier" into Web traffic of its mobile 
subscribers and Verizon applied for a patent 
<https://www.google.com/patents/US8763101> for inserting a "unique 
identification header" into its subscriber's traffic.  The Verizon 
patent claims this header is specifically meant to "provide content that 
is targeted to a subscriber."

Inserting the identifiers requires the telecom carrier to modify the 
information that flows out of a user's phone. AT&T's patent acknowledges 
that it would be impossible to insert the identifier into web traffic if 
it were encrypted using HTTPS, but offers an easy solution – to instruct 
web servers to force phones to use an unencrypted connection.

In the fall of 2012, Verizon notified users 
<https://www.verizonwireless.com/news/article/2012/10/verizon-wireless-privacy-policy.html> 
that it would begin selling "aggregating customer data that has already 
been de-identified" -- such as Web-browsing history and location -- and 
offered users an opt-out. In 2013, AT&T launched 
<http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=24216&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=36458> 
its version -- a plan to offer "anonymous AT&T data" to allow advertiser 
to "deliver the most relevant messages to consumers." The company also 
updated its privacy policy 
<http://www.attpublicpolicy.com/privacy/our-updated-privacy-policy-2/> 
to offer an opt-out.

AT&T's program eventually shut down. Company spokesman Mark Siegel said 
that AT&T is currently inserting the identifiers as part of a "test" for 
a possible future "relevant advertising" service. "We are considering 
such a program, and any program we would offer would maintain our 
fundamental commitment to customer privacy," he said. He added that the 
identifier changes every 24 hours.

It's not clear how much of a hurdle changing the identifier would 
present to a targeting company that was assembling a dossier of a user's 
behavior.

Meanwhile, Verizon's service – Precision Market Insights – has become 
popular among ad tracking companies that specialize in building 
profiles' of user behavior and creating customized ads for those users. 
Companies that buy the Verizon service can ask Verizon for additional 
information about the people whose unique identifiers they observe.

"What we're excited about is the carrier level ID, a higher-level 
recognition point that lets us track with certainty when a user, who is 
connected to a given carrier, moves from an app to a mobile Web landing 
page," an executive from an ad tracking company Run told an industry 
trade publication 
<http://www.adexchanger.com/mobile/run-ceo-on-using-verizons-precisionid-for-deterministic-mobile-solution/>.

And in a promotional video 
<http://precisionmarketinsights.com/agenicespartnersbrands/> for 
Verizon's service, ad executive Chris Smith at Turn, touted "the 
accuracy of the data," that the company receives from Verizon.

But advertisers who don't pay Verizon for additional information still 
receive the identifier. A Verizon spokeswoman said, "We do not provide 
any data related to the [unique identifier] without customer consent and 
we change the [unique identifier] on a regular basis to prevent third 
parties from building profiles against it." She declined to say how 
often Verizon changes the identifier.

The use of carrier-level identifiers appears to be becoming standard. 
Vodafone, a British telecom, says it inserts a similar identifier into 
some mobile traffic. A Vodafone spokesman said "Header enrichment is not 
our default operation and we do not routinely share information with the 
websites our customers visit."

However, ProPublica found a handful of Vodafone identifiers in its logs 
of website visitors. That review also showed more than two thirds of 
AT&T and Verizon visitors to ProPublica's website contained mobile 
identifiers.

And there appears to be no way to opt out. Last week, security engineer 
Kenn White noticed an Ad Age news article 
<http://adage.com/article/digital/verizon-target-mobile-subscribers-ads/293356/> 
about Verizon's mobile marketing program and set up a test server to see 
if he was being tracked.  He had opted out years ago, but he noticed a 
strange identifier in the web traffic from his phone.

His tweets <https://twitter.com/kennwhite/status/525110471733817344> 
sparked a flurry of discussion 
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8500131> of Verizon's actions on 
the Hacker News discussion board, and articles in the technology 
<http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/10/verizon-wireless-injects-identifiers-link-its-users-to-web-requests/> 
press <http://www.wired.com/2014/10/verizons-perma-cookie/>.

Software engineer Dan Schmads, an AT&T user, also tried to opt out. He 
found that he needed to visit four different webpages to opt out, 
including one web page not even on AT&T's domain: 
http://205.234.28.93/mobileoptout/. But he continues to see the AT&T 
identifier in his mobile traffic.

AT&T's Siegel told ProPublica that he appreciated the feedback on the 
difficulty of opting out and that the company plans to streamline the 
process before launching its service.

"Before we do any new program, we'll give customers the opportunity to 
reset their mobile ID at any time," he said. "It would be like clearing 
cookies."

Google has proposed a new Internet protocol 
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-http2-15> called SPDY 
that would prevent these types of header injections – much to the dismay 
of many telecom companies who are lobbying against it 
<http://www.atis.org/openweballiance/index.asp>. In May, a Verizon 
executive made a presentation 
<http://www.atis.org/openweballiance/docs/OWAKickoffSlides051414.pdf> 
describing how Google's proposal could "limit value-add services that 
are based on access to header" information.



Ken

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