What I've been curious to learn and haven't heard discussed is how this data will become available. Will I be able to call up Comcast and pay $X for a particular user's browsing history after this passes?
> According to Ad Age, SAP sells a service called Consumer Insights 365, which “ingests regularly updated data representing as many as 300 cellphone events per day for each of the 20 million to 25 million mobile subscribers.” What type of data does Consumer Insights 365 “ingest?” Again, according to Ad Age, “The service also combines data from telcos with other information, telling businesses whether shoppers are checking out competitor prices… It can tell them the age ranges and genders of people who visited a store location between 10 a.m. and noon, and link location and demographic data with shoppers' web browsing history.”
My guess is they'd just use price as a gatekeeper, rather than spending time to do a background check of their customers. I doubt any of these data feeds are cheap.
I'd love to see this process get hacked - What's the CEO of {your_favorite_ISP} been perusing on the web? Sounds like a good opportunity for a crowdfund.
There are firms that specialize in advertising data. If you're wondering where you information goes when you signup for your grocery store rewards programs, it's those guys. You usually can't buy a particular user history, it's usually in bulk. This is just standard practice, no government organization is placing rules on it so we'll see what kind of inevitable abuse stems from it.
It was made available by Obama starting in 2015 when he removed FTC authority over them. That tap wouldn't shut off until December at the earliest if the current administration did nothing.
The EFF is oddly silent about why they've been so oddly silent about this exposure for close to 3 years now.
> According to Ad Age, SAP sells a service called Consumer Insights 365, which “ingests regularly updated data representing as many as 300 cellphone events per day for each of the 20 million to 25 million mobile subscribers.” What type of data does Consumer Insights 365 “ingest?” Again, according to Ad Age, “The service also combines data from telcos with other information, telling businesses whether shoppers are checking out competitor prices… It can tell them the age ranges and genders of people who visited a store location between 10 a.m. and noon, and link location and demographic data with shoppers' web browsing history.”