Verizon Phones Will Soon Have Location Tracking Warning Labels [Verizon Going Pro-Active With Location Tracking, Will Soon Put A Warning Sticker Over Every Device Display]

Posted on TFTS by Robert Nelson on Friday, 29. April 2011 under: Mobile/Cell Phones

Verizon has announced plans to make users more aware of the fact that many of them are carrying around a device that is capable of tracking your location. And while many would assume this is coming as a result of the recent mess with the consolidated.db file on the iPhone — it seems this stems from a mix of an earlier article that ran in The New York Times and Congressman Ed Markey from Massachusetts..

Of course, that particular NYT article did not single out Verizon by themselves, but also included Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T. Anyway, at least for now the response is coming by way of Verizon. As for what they are doing, their plan is to make users aware of the potential issue before they begin using their phone. How you may ask? By placing a sticker overlay on the display of each phone sold. The sticker will read as follows;

“Remove before use
This device is capable of determining its (and your) physical, geographic location and can associate this location data with other customer information.
To limit access to location information by others, refer to the User Guide for Location settings and be cautious when downloading, accessing or using applications and services.”

It seems to me that this will probably frighten a few people and also most likely result in more than a few questions from paranoid or less-than-technical users. Of course, they key here is education. After all, if the user understands what he/she is dealing with then they can make proper decisions when it comes time to sharing their location.

And for those wondering, Verizon had stated that they hold onto any location data that you transmit for seven years. Yup, even though you may have forgotten where you (and your phone) may have been nearly seven years ago — Verizon could potentially tell you.

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