Verizon to spy on all your activities and share data with marketers
Verizon is “enhancing” its Relevant Mobile Advertising program, which collects data from its users to display ads that are supposed to be relevant to the individual.
“In addition to the customer information that’s currently part of the program, we will soon use an anonymous, unique identifier we create when you register on our websites,” Verizon Wireless is telling customers.
“This identifier may allow an advertiser to use information they have about your visits to websites from your desktop computer to deliver marketing messages to mobile devices on our network,” it says.
That means exactly what it looks like: Verizon will monitor not just your wireless activities but also what you do on your wired or Wi-Fi-connected laptop or desktop computer — even if your computer doesn’t have a Verizon connection.
The company will then share that additional data with marketers.
Verizon is installing this software and enrolling customers into the program, often without customers even knowing about it.
There is a way to opt-out.
Can I refuse permission to use my information for Relevant Mobile Advertising?
Yes, you can notify us that you do not want us to use your information for Relevant Mobile Advertising by visiting www.vzw.com/myprivacy or by calling (866) 211-0874.
Note: if you have a multi-line account, you must indicate your privacy choices with respect to each individual line.
In addition, if you would like to prevent third party advertising entities from using information they have about your web browsing across sites unrelated to Verizon, including the use of this information in the Relevant Mobile Advertising program, you can opt-out at www.aboutads.info.
In order to opt-out, javascript and cookies must be enabled. There is no way to tell if this will actually do anything or if you will just be tracked via cookies after opting out.
http://www.lossofprivacy.com/index.php/2014/04/verizon-to-monitor-wireless-and-wired-or-wi-fi-connected-activities-share-data-with-marketers/
Giant govt. spying database to track students from school to workplace:
IN - The mega data-sharing system — dubbed the Indiana Network of Knowledge, or INK — is intended to track students from elementary school through high school and college and into the workforce, and produce “big picture” job and education trend information.
Imagine a giant database filled with every Hoosier student’s elementary and high school achievement test scores, SAT scores, college degrees and eventually job and salary history.
State officials are preparing to build it. They want it to tell them exactly what happens to students who don’t finish high school or who switch majors in college. But the big payoff would be forecasting the job market and using that information to adjust the education system to deliver workers to meet the needs.
That would be accomplished by electronically linking data from the Department of Education, Commission for Higher Education and the Department of Workforce Development, while trying to persuade employers to share job and salary histories.
“A lot of states are developing longitudinal databases on how students are performing and translate that into how well the education system is doing,” said Rep. Steve Braun, R-Zionsville, author of House Enrolled Act 1003, which established INK.
“But there’s nobody currently that is looking at the future job market effectively and using that to inform the education system,” he said. “That is obviously the greatest value in terms of closing the skills gap because it really aligns the education system with the job market.”
A number of states and the federal government have been building databases with more granular data, about specific students, to find out what types of initiatives are effective and to track individual student’s paths through schooling and the workforce.
Parent activists like Erin Tuttle, an Indianapolis Catholic school parent and co-founder of Hoosiers Against Common Core, is equally concerned.
“The fear that people have is that it (data) will be shared and sold,” said Tuttle. “A lot of people don’t want their data out there because of all the violations and all the ways that it can be manipulated. Those things get hacked all the time.”
“I don’t think people should be tracked all the way through the workforce,” she said. “I think it’s very dangerous. It really is one of those Pandora’s boxes.”
Cate said some fear such data systems also could be used for unadvertised purposes such as tracking down students with unpaid loans or who might be involved in terrorist activities.
“That fear is not totally an imaginary fear,” he said. “One of the first places the FBI turned after 9/11 (terrorist attacks) was to universities.”
The federal law protecting access to student information, known as FERPA, doesn’t allow the FBI to just call and ask for the data, he said. But one of the biggest concerns that make privacy advocates like him nervous, he said, is imagining the government already having access to such data without having to get legal permission to use it.
Those types of concerns, say state officials and other supporters of INK, are unfounded.
WTF! DOES ANYONE BELIEVE PARENTS CONCERNS ABOUT GOVT. SPYING ARE UNFOUNDED?
Jeff Terp, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Ivy Tech Community College, doesn’t see a down side – only benefits.
Does he have privacy concerns? “None whatsoever. We share data now with others and there are no privacy issues.”
It's business as usual when it comes to selling our privacy, just follow the money trail.
Under the new law, the data is protected under state and federal privacy laws, including FERPA, which the agencies involved have to follow. They say checks and balances are designed into the law through a five-member committee that will control and monitor the use of the data, decide what research will be done and who will conduct it. HA,HA that's hilarious!
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2014/04/26/giant-database-track-hoosier-students-school-workplace/8169527/