WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and senior Democrats on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation are asking the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission to investigate Verizon’s use of supercookies to track cellphone user activity.
Supercookies are an identification number used to track and tag Internet users for advertisement purposes. Unlike regular and widely used Internet cookies, the supercookie cannot be disabled.
In a Feb. 6 statement, Nelson said, “This whole supercookie business raises the specter of corporations being able to peek into the habits of Americans without their knowledge or consent. That’s why I think we need to get to the bottom of this and perhaps new legislation.”
Before asking the FTC and FCC to look into Verizon’s activities, Nelson and other federal lawmakers on Jan. 20 sent an open letter to the carrier’s CEO Lowell McAdam asking if Verizon would discontinue using supercookies and whether protocols were in place to protect customer privacy.
In response to the senators’ open letter, Verizon sent the elected officials a copy of the company’s “full privacy policy.”
As the senators noted in their letter to the FTC, Verizon “did not provide any other public disclosures or information provided to wireless customers. Verizon also did not answer whether its policy had changed upon discovery of Turn’s practices.”
Turn is an online marketing firm that was using Verizon supercookies to track the browsing habits of the telecom company’s customers even when they had specifically enabled privacy settings.
The use of such technology has long been a concern of privacy advocates as it can easily be repurposed by marketing firms, intelligence agencies, law enforcement and other third parties without the user’s knowledge or consent.
Turn has suspended its use of Verizon supercookies. AT&T stopped using supercookies back in November.
Verizion spokeswomen Debbie Lewis said in a statement released Feb. 2: “We listen to our customers and provide them the ability to opt out of our advertising programs. We have begun working to expand the opt-out to include the identifier referred to as the UIDH (unique identifier header), and expect that to be available soon. As a reminder, Verizon never shares customer information with third parties as part of our advertising programs.”
