Verizon Wireless has been using a new type of cookie to help target ads to mobile customers. The new cookie has been dubbed the ‘supercookie’ and collects additional information and uses it to help improve the quality of marketing. Verizon has given all their users an option to opt-out of having the supercookie used on their devices, but according to a letter sent from US Senators to the FCC, this may not be enough.
US Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) sent a letter on February 6th to the FCC recommending that they require Verizon have users opt-in rather than opt-out for the supercookies. In the statement he said, “The 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 need new legislation.”
This is an especially influential Senator for this issue since he is on the Senate Commerce Committee.
In addition to Nelson, fellow Democrats Edward Markey from Massachusetts, Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut and Brian Schatz from Hawaii have also reached out to the FCC to begin looking into this.
These letters come just a few weeks after Verizon implemented their opt-out option for the supercookies. Prior to that, there was no simple way to remove the tracking. Verizon only put the opt-in option in because of a lot of push back from privacy advocates.
Similar tracking tags were tried by AT&T late last year, but after some experimentation with their devices, they decided to discontinue the practice. The decision likely had a lot to do with the privacy concerns that it raised and customers being upset about it.
There is no word yet on whether or not the FCC will take up this case, or if Verizon will do anything to proactively address the problem.
