FCC Allows Bells to Sell Your Telephone Usage Data

Devistater writes "Spotted on hardocp. The FCC said in a ruling yesterday that telephone companies can sell your name, who you call, and for how long you talk to anyone who is an "affiliate." No longer is this required to be an opt in marketing approach, now its OPT OUT. Sounds like spam is coming to the telephone world, and what an egregious breach of privacy. Article on PCWorld has some of the details." There's also a short Reuters story and a good one on ecommercetimes.com.

Comments

Voice your complaints!

[sup4hleet]

Chairman Michael K. Powell: mpowell@fcc.gov
Commissioner Kathleen Q. Abernathy: kabernat@fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael J. Copps: mcopps@fcc.gov
Commissioner Kevin J. Martin: kjmweb@fcc.gov

Customer Service Standards:
Send your comments to:OMDCSSTF@fcc.gov

General e-mail should be sent to: FCCINFO@FCC.GOV

Remember: a complaint should be a well thoughtout, polite, disagreement NOT a psychotic rant.

Re:So where do you opt out?

[gilroy]

EPIC's page ( http://www.epic.org/privacy/cpni/) has some info. For Verizon, call (866) 483-9600 and wade through a tedious phone tree (about four minutes, but have your bill handy).

Don't blame the FCC

[Nintendork]

Blame the US Court of Appeals. They're the ones that instructed the FCC to use an opt-out method.

Taken from Chairman Powell's public statement:
"But we conclude, albeit somewhat reluctantly, that under the court's constitutional analysis, companies may satisfy the somewhat less stringent requirement of giving consumers the chance to "opt-out" of intracompany communications-related use of CPNI.(1)

(1) The court instructed the Commission to consider an opt-out strategy, which the court concluded was "an obvious and substantially less restrictive alternative" to opt-in. U.S. West v. FCC, 182 F.3d 1224, 1238 (10th Cir. 1999), cert. denied 530 U.S. 1213 (2000)"

Contact the Court of Appeals and complain. Also, contact your local representative.

-Lucas