AT&T's logo at its new retail store in Chicago. AT&T AT&T updated its privacy policy last week with a notice that it plans to start selling anonymous location data about its customers to marketers.

Although the policy was updated on June 28, news sites like Fierce Wireless just picked up on it this week.

Here's the kind of information AT&T will be selling: your location based on WiFi networks you connect to, Web browsing data, and apps you use.

Now, let's be clear on what this means:

First, all the data are anonymous. AT&T's method takes "aggregate" location data from a bunch of users to sell to marketers. If you're an AT&T customer, your personal information will never reach a third-party marketer with this method.

Next, other carriers, including Verizon, already use such aggregate location data to sell to marketers, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that AT&T plans to try the method too.

Finally, the end goal is to provide targeted ads that are theoretically more relevant to you.

So if you're uncomfortable with that, how do you opt out?





It seems pretty easy. Just log into your AT&T account on this site and tweak your settings to say you don't want your data used for external marketing and analytics reports.



