Verizon draws fire for monitoring app usage, browsing habits

The company this month began offering reports to marketers showing what Verizon subscribers are doing on their phones and other mobile devices, including what iOS and Android apps are in use in which locations. Verizon says it may link the data to third-party databases with information about customers’ gender, age, and even details such as “sports enthusiast, frequent diner or pet owner.”

“We’re able to view just everything that they do,” Bill Diggins, U.S. chief for the Verizon Wireless marketing initiative, told an industry conference earlier this year. “And that’s really where data is going today. Data is the new oil.”

However, ads make Facebook and Google free to use. Says Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project: “When you pay a company $80 a month, they have no business monetizing the data they’re collecting.”