Tag: UIDH

Action shows cost of employing business practices that fail to respect privacy

Today, Access delivered a petition signed by 3,000 users to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate the use of so-called “zombie cookies” by mobile carriers to track their customers’ web traffic. Access also delivered a similar petition to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) because both agencies arguably have the authority to investigate these harmful practices.

Access has been fighting the use of supercookies since last fall, when we learned that the mobile carrier Verizon Wireless had been secretly injecting Unique Identifier Headers, or UIDH, into every single http request made by its mobile users. Recently, we learned even more disturbing news about mobile tracking on Verizon and other cell phone carriers over the past few weeks. Even without this type of third-party abuse, though, the very existence of these cookies violates our privacy rights if we can’t truly opt out.

62,000 Users Rally to Challenge Mobile Tracking by Verizon and other major carriers.