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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.
This means that now all any government agency needs to do is set up a dummy corporation that's an "affiliate", and my phone company will give them unlimited access to all the data about me.
Ya gotta admit, it's a neat end run around the laws that restrict government surveillance.
Oh, well, I suppose as a known computer programmer, I'm already on all the lists of suspected terrorists.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The Bells would love for you to be on tons of those obnoxious calling lists. Not only do they make money from selling your name and phone number, I'm sure it also increases their rate of sales for those extra options to block telemarketers. Sounds like a win-win for the bells.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Better opt out right away . . . anybody know how?
Hello Mr Smith, I'm calling today to tell you that we noticed that you are making quite a few calls to 555-555-5555. We further wish to tell you that we believe that these calls are related to you having an extramarital affair.
We are bringing you this service to offer you a chance to keep us quiet with a one time payment of $500. Not only will you get piece of mind ( for now ) that we won't tell your wife but you'll also get a handy cookbook from Martha Stewart.
If you don't wish to have your marriage ruined please stay on the line while I transfer this call to an independent verifier
Have a good day!
What a moron. I guess I should have a reduced expectation of privacy in the bathroom if it is in regards to the brand of toilet paper I use, or my preferred bar soap.
I can't believe he thinks anyone will buy this aas anything but a cop out to corporate "donations". Too bad no one gives a damn.
argh. Time to call the phone company and sit on hold for a million years...
----rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
Well, yes and no.
1) You have to decide if their violating your privacy constitutes harming you. I think it does. So, just like drug makers can't sell you poison (doing you harm,) the phone company can't sell your phone records to people who want information on you. The harm is, I will grant, less severe, but it is still harm.
2) The guv'mint provides a regulatory backdrop that makes the telephone system possible. The system was built by Bell, originally, but with government help. If there were really more than one system - if, say, Sprint and AT&T customers could not call each other - than you might expect less guarantees about their behavior. As it is, they are selling access to the single, public, telephone network. They should not be in a position to dictate the terms under which that network can be accessed.
3) In the past, your phone records have been more-or-less private. This is a PRECEDENT. Precedent is more powerful than logic; if you engage in an illogical business practice long enough that people expect you to do it, you can't stop. Unfortunately, this principle has no force of written law, but as a practical guideline it pops up all the time.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
I would hate to think of the that anytime you purchase a good or service, that your personal information will be sold to spam houses.
The whole concept of advertising right now is getting absolutely ridiculous. It seems now that the onus is on us as consumers to pay attention to all advertisments, rather than the advertising to attract us by being clever, funny what have you. Simply by being a possible consumer, the advertiser somehow got the right to harrass me.
What's the point of having a telephone, if I am going to be getting the ringing equivalent of pop-up windows? It's bad enough with telemarketers.
Screw it, if any one needs to reach me, send me a damn letter (email's worse!), if its important enough for me to know it can wait a week sheesh...
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the kind of information that you needed a warrant to get? How can something that was considered private enough to require a judge's approval now be sold to the highest bidder. I seriously hope that this is not as bad as it sounds. I'm holding off writing my representatives until I see if this is real and if it really says what we're hearing. If the news is as bad as this sounds, WRITE YOUR REPRESNTATIVE!!! Don't let this action go unchallenged.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
It is NOT a free speech issue to tell other divisions, "partners", or anyone at all for that matter who I call. I don't think this you can find a better example of violating a person's right to privacy (4th Amendment) than to sell or otherwise disseminate details about a person's personal phone calls (date, time, number, duration).
This is a clear example of corporate takeover of government. Citizens - you're doing it to yourselves. Take political action; you don't have to quit your job. Just take a few minutes one day a week to contact your representatives to gripe and organize locally, whether you're an independent, a Green, a Republicrat or a Demopublican.
God I hate anyone who says if you dont like something just don't buy it. That works for pizzas (man you'll never see me eat at a Papa Johns) but not GOVERNMENT SANCTIONED MONOPOLIES like telephone services.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
The text of the FCC ruling claims that this opt-out thing was done to balance the "first amendment rights" of the carriers. What about my rights not to be marketed at constantly?
Oh, wait, sorry, my mistake. That right's not explicitly mentioned in the constitution, I must not deserve it.
I'm not a person, I'm but a lowly consumer. I exist to fuel other people's economy. I should just shut up and consume.
We must remember the First Amendment which protects any shrill jackass no matter how self-seeking.
-- F. G. Withington
Powell Michael K CM-CH (202) 418-1000
I've found a method that's a bit more effective. Tell them, "please remove me from your list" before they can stammer out their opening stanza. They're legally obligated to cut you from the list, and they can't make more money off your number by selling it. (at least I hope that's the way it works).
Either way, I've noticed significantly less telemarketing calls since I started doing this.
- passion
For those who have Qwest, look here.
I found out that a good way to defeat the computers that do automatic dialing is to place the tone for a wrong/disconnected number at the beginning of your answering machine message, followed by a second or 2 of silence, and then your real message. Then set the number of rings to like 1 or 2. This way the machine hears the tones for a wrong number and immediately hangs up, whereas everyone else is slow compared to a computer and will hear your message just as they are thinking they might have a wrong number. It might be a little confusing for some people at first, but after you explain it to a few people everyone should understand what you're trying to do.
Just always remember that it's better to use their own system against them, then to just sit there and take it up the a$$.
Rob
Tissue paper companies.
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.
I hate the ending of the article:
As a related matter, the FCC is currently seeking industry comment on the use of information about customers whose telecommunications carriers have gone out of business or have filed for bankruptcy protection.
If it follows rulings similar to dot.coms, then those records are assets and will be sold to the highest bidder to pay debts. Ouch!
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Agreed. I'm reminded of that classic SNL sketch "We're the PHONE company, we don't have to care."
Free market zealots crack me up, because their philosophy is based on the mistaken idea that free markets even exist.
In the ideal free market, I want to do task X, company A produces widget A to do task X, company B produces widget B to do task X, company C etc. etc. etc. If one company bothers me, overcharges me, abuses my privacy etc. I just take my business elsewhere. This is a fine model for TVs, cars, etc. etc. but there are many sectors of the economy where this is an entirely false model.
As a most eggregious example, take the California energy crisis. People (or perhaps, if you're bitter politicians paid off by energy companies) were fed up with the innefficiency of the California public utilities. So they privatized the whole thing. Theoretically this was supposed to create a handful of competing companies all trying to undercut each other to provide service X (here, electricity) to as many people as possible. This didn't happen. They got together and fixed prices and engineered a shortage to create demand. Blackouts started, and people's power bills went up. Enron had a big hand in this. Someone tell me, at any point in that company's entire history did they do anything that helped anyone other than a small group of principle shareholders?
The record industry works in the same way. Label A and label B don't compete with each other for customers. They have carefully carved out territories and their prices are fixed by a trade organization (RIAA)
I used to really believe in total free-market capitalism, it's a beautiful theory. But like communism, it fails miserably in practice. You need a strong regulatory government to preserve free trade and competition, because the market naturally tends toward consolidation. Unfortunately, we don't have that. We have a strong government that is more often than not, working to HELP the price fixers and tycoons. There are times when I think our current system is actually worse than total deregulation.
Wow... that went on for too long.
Anyway, back to phone companies. These are companies operating in a government sanctioned monopoly (as the parent post mentioned) in such situations, I think nationalization is the only intellegent way to go, since there is at least some accountability. Wheras in a monopoly, people have no option other than to do without a needed public service. We should have had nationalized railroads years ago, as well, but the democratic party was too addicted to the money that labor unions gave them to support trucks on interstates to bother with it.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
At this point they may hang up, or get confused and put you on with a supervisor who will know about this and take the information.
Now that they have the information, request to be added to their No-Call, and No-Sell lists. By this point you've cost them a lot of phone time, often with a supervisor, plus they usually actually do mail you the no-call policy, and you get blacklisted for being a pain in the ass who knows the law, thus helping make sure you don't get any more calls.
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
You mean like:
- You may have already won $10,000 !!!
- You have been Pre-Approved for a credit card
- You have won a small island in the South Pacific, call 900-SUCKERZ to claim your prize. Hurry!
- Here is a book of coupons for shit you will never buy.
- Please donate to some organization you have never heard of before.
- Get 500 CDs for the price of 1 (plus shipping, handling, and handing over your soul)
- Dear (last person who lived at this address) you have been Pre-approved for a credit card!
- Are the bills getting you down? Debt consolidation can help.
- A special offer just for you Homer J Simpsoy.
- Limited Time Offer!
- We can beat your insurance rates, and save you money $$$$.
- Dated material, open immediately!
- Postal Carrier, do not forward. This is a fantastic prize intended only for the recipient shown below.
- Here is a check for $5000. By endorsing it you agree to open an account with us for that amount, with 27% interest. (this is a real one I got)
- Dell Catalogs
- Victoria's Secret catalogs (OK, I don't mind those)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I've found a method that's a bit more effective. Tell them, "please remove me from your list" before they can stammer out their opening stanza. They're legally obligated to cut you from the list, and they can't make more money off your number by selling it. (at least I hope that's the way it works).
No, the correct thing to say is, "Please ADD me to your Do Not Call list." Removing you from one list doesn't mean you won't appear on another list, but if you're on the Do Not Call list, you should not get another call from the SAME COMPANY. Note that the person calling probably doesn't actually work for the company they're representing; telemarketing is outsourced, and the DNC list probably applies to the telemarketing company rather than the company who wants you to buy stuff, so you may continue to get calls from other telemarketing companies on behalf of the same company, but not from the same telemarketing company again. That may vary somewhat.
Your state may also have a state-wide Do Not Call list; mine does.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
A simpler solution: inform the telemarketer in a borderline-irritated voice, "I'm *supposed* to be on your do-not-call list!" They'll about pee themselves apologizing and will hang up posthaste, and once you hit a marketer who is using a master list, you'll suddenly find you get NO more calls.
I did this some 12-13 years ago, and since then I get maybe one or two junk calls a year (including the recorded type).
The majority of telemarketers work from a nationally-circulated master list, so if you get removed from one call center's list, you'll fall off all of their lists. Daily News or any affiliated paper is a good one to have initially remove you, as they do use a master list.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The people who are whining about how this will increase junk phone calls just don't get it. WHO you call can impact your life a helluva lot worse than that.
Let's say you call the local AIDS hotline to ask 'em a few questions. You become interested in the topic and call back several times.
Fast-forward a few months or years...
Your health insurance company buys a phonecall database. Lo and behold, there's your calls to the local AIDS hotline. Your health insurance company cancels your coverage (and blacklists you so you can't get health insurance anywhere) because it's obvious to them that you must have AIDS (why else would you call an AIDS hotline?) therefore you are a bad insurance risk.
Or...
Let's say you're an MD. You occasionally call a friend who works as a receptionist at the local abortion clinic, just to chat.
Months later...
A radical anti-abortion group buys a 3rdhand phonecall database. Egads, here's a doctor who dares to be in contact with an abortion clinic! Shortly thereafter, you are shot and killed as you leave your home to drive to work.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I'd be more concerned if right-to-lifers bought an abortion clinic's calling information. Forget loss of money or privacy - how about bombing or lynching?
There's also the issue of them knowing the names of people you call now. Think about it - they know your friends names now. Imagine the junkmail they could send. The sort of social engineering we normally only see in E-Mail viruses suddenly becomes much more powerful and much more personal. They can no longer just ape your on-line life to trick you - they can ape your actual real life - you can get a snail-mail from a friend you know saying how your other friend struck it rich doing X. It is, of course a scam - but it grossly increases the maximum IQ to fall for it.
I'd like to see a story where the government serves people, rather than failing to serve as a proper mediator and regulator of business.
However, like man bites dog, I doubt I'll see it often or at all.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.