Verizon Hit By Internet Privacy Freak Out – Occasionally, somebody reads the fine print and gets terrified…

9 Mar 2009

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:

To opt out you can call 1-800-333-9956. Or you can follow the instructions in the mailing to go to verizonwireless.com and log into My Verizon where you will find no mention, no button, no link and no help. Ah, but you forgot to check your Messages. There you will indeed find a link to CPNI. The link is marked ‘Not available.’ Dead end. You could then call Verizon s excellent telephone support. (Nope, I m not being sarcastic.) They won t be able to find the opt out button either. But during the 8 minutes the rep puts you on hold, you ll be amused to hear one of their continuous bits of self-promotion tell you that Verizon never shares your personal information.

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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