By now, you’re probably perfectly familiar with how companies absolutely love to hoard your personal data. They use it to profile you for targeted ads, sell it to other companies for marketing purposes, and sometimes end up unintentionally sharing it with bad actors via data breaches.
We previously covered how T-Mobile added a new “AI Profiling” toggle in their “Privacy Center” a little over a year ago. Now, along with the latest update to their Terms & Conditions at the end of June, there’s two new toggles to worry about, and one of them involves financial information.
T-Mobile’s “Privacy Center” contains all the on/off toggles necessary to opt-out of data collection. The toggles control how T-Mobile uses your personal information, and basically all of them are on by default (unless you’ve previously toggled them off). Now there are two new toggles to worry about, and here is what they do.
Fraud and identity theft protection
First, there’s one called “Fraud and identity theft protection”. This one seems the most innocent of the two, and is described as using your data to “create indicators of potential fraud” as seen below.
When clicking “About fraud and identity theft protection”, T-Mobile gives an example where your bank might request to know if your contact information on your account has changed recently or if you’ve had unusual call activity. This could indicate that a transaction being attempted with your bank might be fraudulent.
On the surface, this one seems pretty “safe” to keep enabled, if you want. Using your personal data as an indicator of fraud for other companies makes sense. However, it’s unclear what other companies might request this data, and what security is in place to prevent its abuse. You’ll have to make the decision on if you want this one enabled or not.
Sharing certain financial information
The second new toggle sounds a bit more scary, in our opinion.
This one allows T-Mobile to share the data it collects on you about your finances in regards to your T-Mobile account. Things like your payment history, devices you are financing or want to finance, and your overall account balance are all included in this category.
As seen below, T-Mobile, by default, will share this data with “Financial companies for joint marketing” as well as “Affiliates for marketing purposes”, among others. Not too great.
The more info link on this one mostly refers you to check their general Privacy Notice for more information, and mentions that T-Mobile collects this type of financial info when you open a postpaid account, apply for device financing, and pay your bill, among other activities.
How to disable these toggles and Opt-Out
These new toggles, as well as all the previous ones (like the AI Profiling toggle), are located in the Privacy Center. Each of T-Mobile’s brands, from postpaid to prepaid, have separate logins to access this panel. For the purposes of this article, we’ve used a standard T-Mobile Postpaid plan.
On mobile, you can open the T-Life app, go to the Manage tab, hit the gear icon at the top right, and scroll down to “Privacy & policies” and tap it. Then tap “Privacy dashboard”. To access via the web instead, simply use the link above (or the button at the bottom of this article).
From there, you’ll need to click/tap “Get started” for the brand you’re a customer of. Then, if you aren’t already signed in, you’ll need to do so.
Next up you’ll be taken to the main dashboard. This is where you’ll find the majority of the opt-out toggles, including the two new ones we covered in this article. Go through each one, and disable them as desired.
Do note that the toggles are on a per-line basis, so you’ll need to adjust the toggles that you want to change and repeat the process for each line you have. You can change the managed line at the top of the page.
While you’re here, be sure to check out the “Manage Do Not Sell or Share” and “Update marketing preferences” buttons near the bottom of the page. These buttons lead to two separate pages that have even more toggles related to those subjects.
Final thoughts
T-Mobile, like every company, loves your personal data. They would likely argue that some of these toggles are actually for your benefit, and that could be true.
Luckily, unlike some companies, T-Mobile seems to have made it pretty easy to adjust these settings all in one place. It’s a breath of fresh air when these options are simple and easy to change, and don’t require jumping through a ton of hoops to access.
That being said, we do wish that the more invasive ones (like the AI Profiling especially) were off by default. Either way, at least they can be turned off all together if desired.
