I finally got around to watching the final season of “Parks and Recreation,” Amy Poehler’s popular TV comedy, the other weekend.
The last season is set in 2017, and not much is different except for a few technological advances that lead to one hilarious episode about the fictional tech giant Grizzl — a parody company of actual social media sites like Facebook and Twitter — data-mining in order to advertise to consumers.
The episode ended, of course, with Leslie Knope — Amy Poehler’s earnest and funny character — winning against Grizzl and preventing them from data-mining private information.
And I thought, of course, that real-life tech companies would be a lot smarter than Grizzl’s bumbling CEO, but evidently I was wrong. Verizon purchased AOL at the beginning of the year for $4.4 billion and released a new privacy clause.
According to Slate, Verizon will have access to users’ “gender, age range and interests” in order to track them using cookies and to advertise to them based on what would meet users’ specific needs.
I was, of course, shocked — first because what Verizon is doing sounds a lot like data-mining, and second because I know little about technology and therefore have no idea what information Verizon could potentially access.
The New York Times dubbed Verizon’s new tracking system “supercookies.” According to the Times, Verizon will have the ability to place tags on its users in order to figure out what their interests are and where they like to spend their time on the Internet in order to suggest apps and new technology and — of course — to advertise.
This seems relatively harmless and many companies and websites already tag users in order to advertise to them.
Have you ever looked up a book for class on Amazon and, when you check Facebook or Twitter a few hours later, Amazon ads are in the sidebars of your profile? That’s a result of cookies and tracking.
But the fact Verizon is doing it opens users up to “covert tracking and profiling,” according to the New York Times. Given that users place sensitive information on their Verizon accounts, the whole thing seems like a bad idea.
Verizon needs to provide an opt-out option for its users, and it seriously needs to review this policy before making it a part of their company.
Furthermore, we as users need to be careful where we place our sensitive information and to demand transparency from the tech companies we use.
Advertisement and cookies are fine. A risk to security is not.
ewenning@indiana.edu
@emmawenninger
