Over the weekend, complaints emerged and bubbled over that Verizon Wireless had cooked up a new pile of fine print regarding their use of customer information, and was sending out letters to customers telling them they had 45-days to “opt out” of having this information shared with “affiliates, agents and parent companies.” The discussion began when author and consumer advocate David Weinberger blogged about the memo he received with his latest bill, and highlighted that the opt-out process is a lot harder than it should be:

For its part, Verizon posted something to their own blog insisting that nothing in the policy has changed, and they tell GigaOM that the information is only shared within Verizon and Vodafone (though what Vodafone does with it isn’t clear). Of course, the question continues to be whether consumers should have to opt-out at all, something that’s going to get a lot more discussion given the FCC’s plan to focus heavily on privacy issues. Sensing the regulatory hammer, Verizon has been arguing that public shame will keep them honest, so regulation isn’t necessary.
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