US wireless carrier Verizon is now offering its users with a tool to shut down the so-called “supercookies” that keeps a close eye on their Internet activities and keep their personal data at stake.
“We have begun working to expand the opt-out to include the identifier referred to as the UIDH, and expect that to be available soon,” Verizon spokesperson Debra Lewis said.
Last year, the tech experts discovered the highly-risky supercookies. Owing to its huge risks, these special kind of cookies have raised the concerns of telecom companies, such as Verizon and AT&T, which use them for monitoring the web browsing activities of their customers.
Verizon has been facing heat from the advocates of consumer privacy for using supercookies to sneak into users’ online activities.
According to Verizon, it used the user data via supercookies for analyzing their interests and better understand their requirements. However, those gathered information are used by the advertisers for knowing their target audience and release ads accordingly.
The tech world has condemned supercookies for variety of reasons. As they keep eye on the internet usage information of the users to supply data to the advertisers, there exists a higher possibility of data leak or compromise of user information to the hackers.
The only method existed with Verizon for removal of a supercookie was through unsubscribing the Precision Market Insights program, which can be accessed by contacting the service center on mobile, visiting the wireless web portal of the company, or talking to a customer representative over the telephone.
According to the tech experts, the regular cookies are far easy to remove from the browsers than supercookies that are very dangerous for the online data and very hard to get rid-off.
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