National phone carriers are swiftly changing their privacy policies so they can take a bite into the big pie being made of mobile user marketing. Phone carriers are able to track web browsing, video viewing, app usage, and much more. A recent look into this by CNN Money describes the interest that the big four carriers have in this rapidly expanding market, and how the carriers are positioning themselves to have the most comprehensive data to offer marketers.

David Goldman first describes a sample use for the vast set of data being gathered on mobile users:

That kind of data could be very useful — and lucrative — to third-party companies. For instance, if a small business owner wanted to figure out the best place to open a new pet store, the owner could buy a marketing report from Verizon about a designated area. The report might reveal which city blocks get the most foot or car traffic from people whose Web browsing history reveals that they own pets.

The big four carriers–AT&T, Spring, T-Mobile, and Sprint–have all made steps to be able to make valuable targeting data available to marketers on their systems. However, “show[ing] customers carefully tailored” advertisments based on “anonymous, aggregate” data is nothing new:

Selling customer information is an age-old practice that is certainly not exclusive to the wireless industry. Brian Kennish, a former DoubleClick engineer who developed the advertising network’s mobile ad server, noted that wireless companies have been sharing users’ location data with third parties for more than a decade.

And to make the case that the sort of marketing data being mentioned above is nothing new, it brought a smirk to our faces to see Verizon ads appropriately placed on the CNN Money website as we read the very article we’re discussing.

Goldman continues by acknowledging this new positioning by the mobile carriers as a unexpected consequence of the meteoric rise of mobile usage. And the increased usage of mobile applications, a story we covered on the OPUSblog just days ago, is allowing even greater data collection by app developers and phone carriers alike. No matter the carrier you are on, the rise of location-based and near field communications services will become soon more prevalent than they already are.

Though the article seems to offer glimpses only at the vast opportunities presented by the more-targeted mobile marketing, those worrying of privacy intrusions are not to be left without their voice.

“The Web pages we go to and searches we do are the closest thing to our thoughts, the most private info of all, that can be recorded,” said Kennish, who now heads up Disconnect, an online privacy tool. “If Verizon succeeds, I’m sure others will follow. Despite all the talk about privacy lately, things are just getting worse.”