Advisorator Free: Stop wireless carrier creepiness

Stop wireless carrier creepiness

Jared Newman
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March 16, 2021

T-Mobile customers should strongly consider taking a minute to opt out of an unbecoming new program from the Un-carrier. According to the Wall Street Journal, T-Mobile will kick of a program in late April that monitors customers’ web browsing habits and sells the data to advertisers. Customers will be signed into this program by default, and as Ars Technica points out, the carrier may be running some version of it already.

So how do you opt out? Per this excellent Vox explainer, you can sign into T-Mobile’s online account dashboard, then head to Account > Profile Settings > Privacy and Notifications > Advertising & Analytics. (Yeesh.) Then, disable the options to make ads more relevant and to use data for analytics purposes. Ars Technica also suggests visiting T-Mobile’s Privacy tools and Do Not Sell pages to disable any permissions there.

Bear in mind that AT&T and Verizon have their own programs for selling customers’ data, though it’s unclear whether they’re as intrusive as T-Mobile’s. (Part of the problem with online privacy is that the inner workings are inscrutable.)

Still, you can opt out of those programs too. For AT&T, sign into the company’s “Consent Dashboard,” then head to Relevant Advertising and set the allow use option to “No.” For Verizon, head to this site and select “Don’t share” for all options.

Spend wisely

The next time you’re in the market for a new iPhone, check Apple’s website for carrier deals. The company’s new “carrier offers” page lists current deals from AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint in one place and lets you make the purchase through Apple directly. (For trade-in credit, you’ll still have to send the phone to the carrier instead of Apple.)

Apple’s site may also be a useful reference point for Android users, since the same deals tend to be available for other phones, though of course you’ll ultimately have to go through the carrier websites to get them.

Just make sure to read the fine print first, as these deals tend to require long-term commitments. AT&T, for instance, spreads out its $700 credit over three years, effectively sticking you with an early termination fee if you leave in the middle.

In this week’s full issue of Advisorator, I wrote about whether extra antivirus is still necessary, a big update for Chromebooks, a less-fatiguing video chat app, a way to make popular apps less obnoxious, and more.

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Until next week,

Jared