AT&T has figured out a new way to sell you even more teeny, tiny bits of data in exchange for more chunks of data about you.

It's called Data Perks. Basically, here's how it really works: An AT&T customer downloads the Data Perks app. Then the customer participates in a survey or buys into a sale or deal from within the app. In return, the customer earns bits of data that can be transferred back to their account from 25 MB up to 1,000 MB (1 GB) for each billing cycle.

Because of the way it works, an AT&T customer may be working some significant hours just to get barely an hour of free YouTube. Worse still, for example, is if a customer buys into a deal to avail of a pair of pants for $80 and will also be gifted with 150 MB of data once they complete the transaction on the Data Perks app. It seems as if the money that a customer must spend on an item in exchange for just a bit of data doesn't quite even out. For a pair of $80 pants, a payout of just 150 MB of data is quite low. In fact, a customer could buy a few more GBs (over the single GB AT&T only offers in the promo) worth of data for that amount of money.

On top of that, any data that a customer doesn't use within a current billing cycle will expire. Also, even if the Data Perks promo can be used by AT&T customers on a Mobile Share Value plan, the data earned on one line cannot be transferred between other lines. That's too bad because that may have made the Data Perks promo actually worthwhile if, for example, a family of four all in one shared plan could earn and use data together. Otherwise, a customer short on data and wanting some more, will need plenty of free time to complete the surveys.

The Data Perks app is available now on both Android and iOS. Currently, Google users have given it a 3.1 out of 5-star rating. The app is free, at least.

Photo: Mike Mozart | Flickr