Verizon Wireless to Share Use Information Unless Cellphone Users Opt Out
Unless customers opt out within 30 days, Verizon Wireless will share billing and service use data with advertisers, the carrier wrote customers in a notice about Customer Proprietary Network Information. Failure to respond will be taken as “permission to share this information among our affiliates, agents and parent companies (including Vodafone) and their subsidiaries,” the notice said.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
To opt out, customers must call a toll-free number. Customers also may call the number to withdraw consent after the 30-day period. “Please be advised that if you do not opt out, your consent will remain valid until we receive your notice withdrawing it,” the notice said. The customer information includes quantity, technical configuration, type, destination, location and amount of use of purchased telecom services, as well as “related billing information,” Verizon said. It doesn’t include name, address or wireless phone number, it said.
Verizon “should not assume customers want to give up their privacy,” said Melissa Ngo, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. In July, EPIC and nine other privacy and consumer groups filed comments with the FCC asking for stronger safeguards on customer phone records. Verizon’s opt-out system isn’t entirely surprising, Ngo said. “Once again, a cellphone provider is putting the burden on customers to assert rights,” she said. EPIC’s stance is that an opt-in system is always preferable to an opt-out, she added.
“CPNI notices are nothing new,” a Verizon spokesman said. “Other telecom and wireless service providers have been using this as a means to open communications with their customers for years. This is the first time Verizon Wireless has sent a CPNI notice to customers, and in accordance with FCC guidelines, we are providing the opt-out option if customers don’t want us sharing information among our telecom affiliates.”
But not every wireless rival has a CPNI policy like Verizon’s. “We no longer share or use CPNI for cross-marketing purposes,” a Sprint Nextel spokesman told us. Other major carriers did not respond by our deadline.