ProPublica reports on the latest technological find in the device-tracking landscape, ominously called “zombie cookies.” Initially discovered by Stanford’s Jonathan Mayer, zombie cookies stem from a “hidden undeletable number” placed on users of Verizon smartphones and tablets and used by advertising company Turn. The Verizon number is used “to respawn tracking cookies that users have deleted,” the report states. Turn Chief Privacy Officer Max Ochoa, CIPP/US, said, “We are trying to use the most persistent identifier that we can in order to do what we do.” Verizon’s “perma cookie” caused a stir in the news last year, and AT&T dropped a similar ID number after those reports surfaced. In a blog post, Mayer wrote that given the tracking practice, “I think there’s also a good FCC, FTC or state deception case against Verizon.”
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