T-Mobile is now selling your app usage data to advertisers

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Cellular service provider, and self-professed Uncarrier, T-Mobile, is once again back on its bullshit and selling your data to advertisers. This time around, it’s selling aggregated data on your mobile app usage to advertisers.

It’s part of a rebranding of its advertising platform, now known as T-Mobile Advertising Solutions. App Insights is the app analytics platform that’s responsible for selling your app usage data.

This is in addition to the existing change to T-Mobile’s privacy policy, which enables them to sell your other data. You probably want to opt out of this if you’re a T-Mobile subscriber.

T-Mobile takes all its app usage and domain-level web tracking data, and sorts that into personas. For example, “Business Travelers” could be identified if they had apps like “ADP or Concur on their phone and regularly book travel through Expedia.”

The marketing pages say app usage is “the strongest indicator of consumer intent,” so expect to see more of this type of tracking in the industry.

“Mobility Data refers to a comprehensive view of the apps a user has chosen to download to their smart device, as well as how often and for how long they open and engage with those apps. Mobility data is sometimes thought of or referred to as “movement” data, but it’s being redefined in advertising as the nexus of mobile and addressability,” from T-Mobile’s marketing page.

To make the program more palatable to users, T-Mobile doesn’t use location data in the App Insights platform.

However, advertisers can still get your location from other data brokers. The Uncarrier just makes it slightly more difficult for them to put the two together.

There is some good news for iOS users. T-Mobile isn’t collecting data from you (yet). That’s due to Apple’s strict privacy rules. Android users are less lucky and should expect T-Mobile to track everything they do.

Oh, and in case you want to opt out (and you should), you can from the Magenta Marketing Platform Choices app. You can also use the Digital Advertising Alliance’s app, which lets you opt-out of a wide range of services.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.