Canada's Bell Telecommunications Company Wants Permission To Gather, Track Customer Data (www.cbc.ca) 73
Bell Canada is asking customers for permission to track everything they do with their home and mobile phones, internet, television, apps or any other services they get through Bell or its affiliates. "In return, Bell says it will provide advertising and promotions that are more 'tailored' to their needs and preferences," reports CBC.ca. From the report: "Tailored marketing means Bell will be able to customize advertising based on participant account information and service usage patterns, similar to the ways that companies like Google and others have been doing for some time," the company says in recent notices to customers. If given permission, Bell will collect information about its customers' age, gender, billing addresses, and the specific tablet, television or other devices used to access Bell services. It will also collect the "number of messages sent and received, voice minutes, user data consumption and type of connectivity when downloading or streaming." "Bell's marketing partners will not receive the personal information of program participants; we just deliver the offers relevant to the program participants on their behalf," the company assures customers. Teresa Scassa, who teaches law at the University of Ottawa and holds the Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy, says Bell customers who opt into Bell's new program could be giving away commercially valuable personal information with little to no compensation for increased risks to their privacy and security. "Here's a company that's taking every shred of personal information about me, from all kinds of activities that I engage in, and they're monetizing it. What do I get in return? Better ads? Really? That's it? What about better prices?"
Toronto-based consultant Charlie Wilton, whose firm has advised Bell and Rogers in the past, says: "I mean, in a perfect world, they would give you discounts or they would give you points or things that consumers would more tangibly want, rather than just the elimination of a pain point -- which is what they're offering right now."
Toronto-based consultant Charlie Wilton, whose firm has advised Bell and Rogers in the past, says: "I mean, in a perfect world, they would give you discounts or they would give you points or things that consumers would more tangibly want, rather than just the elimination of a pain point -- which is what they're offering right now."
Just say no! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Do you one better: The moment they merely posed the question to me, I called them up and cancelled my lone service with them (internet). But just before I doing that, I shopped around and found an ISP that gives me 3x the speed for 70% the price Bell was charging me in the first place â" which made me realized I should have done this long ago.
Service providers can absentmindedly pile up the straws, but at one point the beast's back will indeed break.
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And since you are posting as AC, you might as well share the general location where this 3x faster speed is available at 70% of the price. It could be of help to others who are fed up with the Rogers and Bell duopoly.
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The ISP is called Teksavvy [teksavvy.com]. I'm not sure about other provinces, but in southern Ontario they're a hell of a lot cheaper than Bell and Rogers. Apparently they've been around for 20 years! I guess it's hard to compete with the big dogs marketing-wise.
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teksavvy is a reseller of incumbent services.
if you cancel bell dsl in a huff and get teksavvy, a bell technician will come and do the install.
they do the same with rogers, shaw, videotron, and every other major isp in canada.
they offer better pricing because they pay bulk rate to the isp. but you have no access to the frills the isp may offer.
for instance, a teksavvy cable customer cannot access shaw go wifi hotspots. despite having shaw as the underlying service provider.
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Mind sharing what is that wonderful ISP you found?
Check Canadianisp.ca [canadianisp.ca] there are a lot of TPIA's(Third Party Internet Access) as they're called up here, which is basically owning their own equipment but leasing the last mile from from incumbents.
I'm biased towards Teksavvy, Start and Ebox. Only because they were the ones leading the way back when Bell and Rogers were trying to impose punitive tariffs on those ISP's, that would have driven a 5/1Mbps price from $33/mo(200GB) to $129/mo, while they charged $59/mo for the same service with a 30GB cap for resi
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I think common sense will prevail, for once - and I will tell you why.
If you go to Bell's web store, and price out an average "bundle" they sell (TV, Internet, landline), you will arrive at roughly $100/month.
This is WITHOUT any mobile plan. Their mobile plans start at $85/month, for 1GB data (with Bonus! 4GB which they will give you for certain period of time, then will count on your complacency and laziness not to cancel and charge you extra later) and usual voice/SMS, etc.
So we are looking at ~$200/month
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Oh, for sure - I was being conservative. Just look what they are doing with Crave right now: $10 to start, another $10 for "HBO+movies", another tier coming down within next 3-6 months.....until it's as expensive as their cable offering, with 720p quality and barely usable app across all platforms.
"Competing with Netflix and Prime", they call it.
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You do pay for this through your agreement that Google can do whatever they please with your personal data, but that's your choice.
As far as I know, Google keeps that data for their own use as well, unlike other services such as Facebook and, it sounds like Bell, who happily sell it.
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As far as I know, Google keeps that data for their own use as well, unlike other services such as Facebook and, it sounds like Bell, who happily sell it.
Google does it too, and to one of the biggest credit card companies around. [bloomberg.com] Mastercard sold a datalink for it's customer data to Google. Google correlated it with their own data, then shared it back to mastercard.
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Not too surprising. Unluckily Google is even harder to avoid then Facebook, especially with a cell phone. I'm surprised how much data goes over the network and I don't even have a data plan though luckily usually no reception at home.
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It's Bell. That's more than enough.
In Canada, there's a telecommunications ombudsman, and let's just say Bell leads the pack in complaints by a WIDE margin.
As in Bell gets over 4700 complaints, while Rogers follows Bell with nearly 1500 complaints. Telus gets nearly 9
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The problem is, we only have 2 viable choices in Canada, Bell and Rogers (where most of my services currently are). They usually mirror each other step for step, so if Rogers follows suit, there is no way to "Just say no" without foregoing telecommunication services completely.
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The problem is, we only have 2 viable choices in Canada, Bell and Rogers (where most of my services currently are). They usually mirror each other step for step, so if Rogers follows suit, there is no way to "Just say no" without foregoing telecommunication services completely.
Not true. Check out TPIA's like Start, Teksavvy, E.box, or execulink. Canadian ISP [canadianisp.ca] gives you a list in your own area. There are other "last mile" companies like Telus, Videotron, Shaw and so on too. But if you're in Ontario it's pretty much Bell and Rogers, or Shaw if you're in Hamilton, or one of the areas that had multiple competitors before the big "buy up" back in 2014ish.
question (Score:2)
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Then they'll do it anyway, just like in the States.
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Dear Bell Canada,
I do nothing. Also, I don't buy anything either. Really, I have the most boring life imaginable. So stop serving me any ads at all.
Best regards,
Your customer.
Or, rather (Score:2)
Teresa Scassa, ... says Bell customers who opt into Bell's new program could be giving away commercially valuable personal information with little to no compensation for increased risks to their privacy and security.
What she meant to say was, "customers who unsuccessfully opt-out of Bell's new program" ...
[ We all know it's actually going to be like that. ]
Permission to track (Score:1)
should NEVER be granted. Ever. But, the permission is likely more a ruse to see how far they can go when they get caught doing it anyway.
Anecdote: For many years, I have been a paying customer of Fastmail, still likely the best email money can buy. I had to leave due to the Australian Access and Assistance Bill, which basically gives the Australian government free reign to get past crypto be means of backdoors and other means. It's illegal even to discuss it there. It's a 10-year jail sentence to try and pr
You get a VPN and you get a VPN (Score:2)
Everybody in the audience gets a VPN. And if you have a good ad-blocker, I'd go with that too, just in case.
Seriously, are there alternatives to Bell in Canada, or any privacy laws to protect consumer privacy or rights?
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There are privacy laws, which seem to be being weakened. This is why currently Bell has to ask permission.
Unluckily our CRTC is like your FCC, run by Telecom shills and they have lobbying power in Parliament. Bell is currently really pushing to get rid of net neutrality and be allowed to block any site they claim facilitates copyright infringement.
Then there's the internet tax that is being pushed, anything over 15GBs taxed to make up for the streaming services not paying the artists enough and of course th
Re:You get a VPN and you get a VPN (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll add for all the Canadians, that we have until Jan 11th to make submissions on the future of the Internet.
One place to start is here, https://act.openmedia.org/Cana... [openmedia.org] ran by Openmedia, https://openmedia.org/ [openmedia.org]
What do I get in return? (Score:2)
What do I get in return? Better ads? Really? That's it? What about better prices?"
The satisfaction of knowing Bell Canada will get higher revenues and bigger profit margins.
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Don't forget those sweet, sweet tailored ads, popping up on every screen you lay your eyes upon!
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Don't forget those sweet, sweet tailored ads, popping up on every screen you lay your eyes upon!
Funny thing about that, Bell Canada was busted by the CRTC for illegally manipulating and throttling traffic(of their and TPIA's) among other things by using Sandvine boxes back in 2008/2009. Don't trust them, not at any point. Especially since they also manipulated the news for their own benefit(2015), and were caught doing it.
Archive, because Globe and Mail is paywalled for old articles. [archive.fo]
Original link here [theglobeandmail.com] if you're a G&M subscriber.
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Hey, they need to break last years record.
Unsurprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Bell Canada ranks up there with anyone else in the world for most evil corporation.
Re:Unsurprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Whoever rated this troll must not be from Canada.
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Whoever rated this troll must not be from Canada.
Well Bell Canada does pay astroturfers to "fix" it's reputation and so on, so maybe paid shill?
Pain point? What pain point? (Score:2)
"I mean, in a perfect world, they would give you discounts or they would give you points or things that consumers would more tangibly want, rather than just the elimination of a pain point -- which is what they're offering right now."
I eliminated my pain point with pfSense, Pi-Hole, VPN and bunch of Firefox add-ons close to two years ago.
Remember the three laws of telecoms (Score:1)
1. They will Overpromise
2. They will Underdeliver
3. They will Overcharge
Oh Bell (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a friend who used to do marketing for a provincial lottery commission. Her job was literally to make people want to gamble more. We've all got to justify what we do, so it was improving the experience so people got the best value for their entertainment dollar.
When you repeat your justifications enough you start to believe them. The ad industry has told itself so many times that people *like* personalized ads that they think it's true. Bell is about to learn that it's not. I actually called them up recently and told them that they are, under no circumstances, to call me with any marketing whatsoever. This was after they rang me while I was travelling internationally. I answered because I thought it might be important. Nope.
I have to hand it to Google though. They've got this personalized ad thing down perfectly. I had never seen an ad on YouTube until I saw it under someone else's account. Google appears to have figured out that when I see an ad I go elsewhere.
Ads likely to replace the content on websites? (Score:1)
So is Bell going to be using this targetted advertising ownly on their own properties? Or are they going to be replacing the ad content shown on non-bell properties and substituting their own ads? If the latter (which is what I suspect), then how is this not hijacking traffic to those sites? Will those sites get a cut of the ad revenue for bell's replacement ads?
Use a VPN (Score:2)
Trust your ISP more than a VPN?
Need to do things that need trust? Do them in person with the bank/brand/utility/company because your ISP now wants to collect "internet" things.
Make a pretend computer full of automated web surfing for the advertising and promotions to collect on as part of an open network.
All part and parcel of *paying* for a modern ISP. Then to pay for a VPN to use the internet.
Then having to do less transaction online as the ISP l
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That is a reactive solution. Reactive solutions hardly ever work. We need a proactive solution.
That proactive solution needs to acknowledge that with the internet era we are seeing entirely new and disruptive phenomena that simply do not fit the implicit assumptions on which our current society is build.
One of those assumptions is that privacy and personal freedom are guaranteed by the impossibility to know everything about everyone. That assumption now has been invalidated and it is already causing havoc.
They already are doing it. (Score:2)
They already know where you are. Down to the street address.
Landline user position is just static when compared to mobile ones.
Everything else, internet traffic included, is pretty much the same. Maybe just slightly tougher.
They are just looking for an official statement.
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Well they haven't changed the law yet. If they get people agreeing, they'll use that to argue against any privacy in the new law.
We have until Jan 11th to tell the government our side. of how the law should be updated.
https://openmedia.org/ [openmedia.org]
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The meme that needs to be spread is that tracking the content of virtual circuits used by TCP/IP communications is "wiretapping" in just the same way that tracking the physical circuits of traditional telephony communications is "wiretapping." Anyone in a privileged position to "listen in" on virtual circuits by virtue of their being a communications carrier has a duty to NOT "listen in." To do otherwise is to break the laws against wiretapping.
For decades the "telephone company" had the ability to liste
Typically Canadian (Score:3)
They ask politely.
Anyone else would have just done it.
Re: Typically Canadian (Score:2)
Let me assure you, they are not politely asking out of the goodness in their hearts:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Will they ever learn? (Score:2)
If you're talking about a home connection (let's just say IP address) then you're not talking about one person.
I like horror movies, my wife won't touch them, my daughter gets nightmares.
It's bad enough that the iPad my daughter uses to watch My Little Pony on YouTube is signed in as the same account I use to watch Critical Role. The "you might be interested in" can get interesting.
When talking about cell phones it's more likely that it's a single user, but even then my daughter uses my cell phone to do th