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Why Is AT&T Collecting and Selling My Data?
So customized, in fact, thatmany people believe their phones are listening to their conversations—when in reality, it’s just very sophisticated data collection, no eavesdropping required. You search for dog beds or hiking boots once, and it feels like you get a month of targeted adseven after you’ve bought the product.
What a lot of people are surprised by, even if they are familiar with services like Facebook watching them like a hawk, is that their Internet Service Provider (ISP) is in on it too. The idea of your ISP selling your data and serving you customized ads to get their slice of the advertising pie seems particularly egregious because they have complete access to your internet connection and what you do with it.
Here’s How to Opt Out of AT&T Data Collection
Use AT&T and want to opt out of their data collection processes? AT&T has a general consent and three data collection options you’ll want to opt out of to stop them from collecting data from your internet connection,wireless plan, and TV package. You may only use AT&T for your internet and not your cell service, or vice versa, but all the settings are in the same place in the user account.
First, log into your AT&T account. Then navigate to the Privacy Choices sub-menu. You can do so by clicking on your Profile icon and then selecting Privacy Choices, orby following this URLwhile logged into your account. AT&T has aPrivacy Center portal(and an even less helpfulPrivacy Consent portal) but jumping directly to the Privacy Choices page is faster.
The AT&T mobile app used to have a dedicated in-app menu for the privacy settings but now just loads the AT&T website in the app. If you want to make the changes within the app you may do so by clicking on the More button in the app navigation bar, selecting the link under your profile icon “Manage Profile” and then swiping to the right to scroll through the web-based Profile page to click on the “Privacy Choices” option just like you would if you logged into the site with a regular web browser. However you do it, you’ll see the profile options seen below.
In the Privacy Choices menu, you’ll want to toggle off the following options.
Be sure to click “Save changes” once you’ve turned them all off. In the example screenshot seen above, there is only a single internet account to adjust the settings for, but if you have multiple accounts or accounts across different services (such as a wireless account and an internet account), you’ll need to toggle all the settings off individually for each listed account.
If you’re curious about what the settings do, you can read the detailed breakdown in the dashboard by clicking more, but here’s a quick summary. Personalized and Personalized Plus are the new names for the same “feature” that has been around for years, formerly called “Relevant Advertising” and “Enhanced Relevant Advertising.”
If all of this has you feeling uneasy about internet privacy, now’s a great time to considerditching your ISP’s default DNS serversand switching toa better DNS server instead. And if you’d like to keep your ISP out of your business, you might consider aVPN. Here are our tips onpicking the best VPN for your needsanda list of our favorite VPNsif you’d like to comparison shop.
