Verizon fined $1.3M for supercookie header injection [pdf]
This is a big victory:<p>&gt; 16. Termination of Investigation. In express reliance on the covenants and representations in this Consent Decree and to avoid further expenditure of public resources, the Bureau agrees to terminate the Investigation. In consideration for the termination of the Investigation, Verizon Wireless agrees to the terms, conditions, and procedures contained herein.<p>Verizon has agreed to pay $1.35M and will likely notify the FTC by mail if it makes a change. It has agreed to abide by the law. If you put this in perspective, this is way more than a slap on the wrist. If we assume a gb costs ~$10 and an average user uses ~6gb then:<p>($1,350,000 fine &#x2F; $10&#x2F;gb) &#x2F; (6gb&#x2F;user * 12months) = 1875<p>This is almost very nearly 1900 people! A huge number. Obviously this is back of a napkin, and the actual size of headers is pretty negligible so there isn&#x27;t any sense in backing that out of the calculation, because the users already paid for the bandwith.<p>Plus, verizon is <i>literally</i> the only company out of hundreds of providers doing this. Surely between the weight of this fine and the competition the company will go bankrupt soon.<p>Big win! Say what you want about the FTC but they closed down the investigation saving an untold number to the US tax payer, Verizon is forced to break the bank, and the response time was rapid, 4 years open shut.<p>The FTC has been super sharp on policing the industry, by allowing the Governement to subsidize huge swathes of infrastructure costs and selling a finite amount of bandwith, they have been able to keep companies on their toes, not allowing any one company to own telephone, wireless, and internet capabilities.<p>I hope they can keep this up because Verizon is the only bad actor in the entire space, so it is pretty much all taken care of now.