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FCC Looking Into Verizon "Supercookies" that track mobile users' behavior [telecom]

by Chris Morran

For years, the Internet behavior of all Verizon Wireless smartphone customers was being tracked by "supercookies" on their devices that they could not opt out of. After the tracking became public knowledge, the company recently gave its customers a way to shake off the invasive snooping, but that isn't stopping the FCC from looking into whether the program violated federal guidelines.

The Hill reports that FCC Chair Tom Wheeler recently sent letters to various U.S. Senators who had expressed concerns about Verizon supercookies, which append an invisible header to all web traffic coming out of your phone.

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Reply to
Bill Horne
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What's an inadvertent Verizon cellular network user, customer actually of Verizon MVNO Page Plus, got to do to "shake off" this "snooping"? The page at offers a toll-free phone number that someone *not* actually a Verizon customer won't be able to use; and Page Plus claims to be in the dark.

Or can it be that a Page Plus customer, using a Verizon-branded Motorola Droid X2 handset, is actually *not* being tracked in this way, after all?

Advice welcomed! Thanks.

And cheers, -- tlvp

Reply to
tlvp

And, another question. As a PagePlus user, I'm in the dark as to what happens when I connect out, not using the cellular service, but rather thru a WiFi connection?

...Bob K

Reply to
Bob K

Thanks, Bob, for asking that: it led me to Google the search-string

: see my http headers

and I found that will display for you precisely what your browser is including in its http headers. Lots of other similar services and information crop up, as well. HTH. Cheers, -- tlvp

Reply to
tlvp

It's not very widely known, but the name of the feature that does this is "HTTP Header Enrichment", a name that's even more delightfully self-serving than most other product names in this field.

Here's a brief document from Juniper on how to configure it:

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This is a "technology" that was apparently first developed for WAP and MMS, which require segregated HTTP traffic with identifying headers.

Duncan Smith

Reply to
Duncan Smith

That was a very interesting site. Using it, I found my cell phone (using the Chrome browser) did not send the UIDH header in either going out via Wi-Fi nor the 4G service.

Looking at the Verizon site, they do make the statement the header isn't sent when connecting via Wi-Fi.

On the desktop, the Firefox, Chrome, and Explorer browsers were including the Dnt (Do not Track) header, but not with the Tor browser. The Dnt wasn't shown for the cell phone, either.

Apparently the UIDH header is used so I can see advertisements I would be interested in. Actually, I'm not interested in seeing any of them -- all they do is use up my data plan and maybe slow everything down.

Bob K

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Reply to
Bob K

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