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Verizon Sues to Stop Privacy Rules; Wants to Sell Call Data
Jake writes "Verizon has asked a federal court to stop state regulators from enforcing new privacy rules that would prohibit telephone companies from using or sharing details about customers' calling habits without permission. Verizon, which serves nearly 1 million customers across Washington state, had plans to begin a data-sharing system that allowed the company and its affiliates to collect information on when, where and how often customers make telephone calls. It would use that data to sell new products and services to customers." "We believe we have certain rights as a corporation to use this information," Verizon's PR person says. Great.
"We believe we have certain rights as a corporation to use this information,"
Question for the NAL's here: Does a corporation have "rights" at all? Real question. I would like to know.
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This is the same stuff, in more serious package:
Finnish police arrest Sonera telecom executives in privacy investigation
Two high-ranking executives at Sonera Corp., Finland's main telecommunications company, were arrested Friday in an investigation into whether the company violated the privacy of its workers.
The employees are Jari Jaakkola, an executive vice-president, and Henri Harmia, who was in charge of co-ordinating Sonera's $6.2-billion merger with the Swedish company Telia. Both have been suspended from the company. The charges of violating Finland's data-security laws come just weeks after police began holding three other Sonera employees who worked with corporate security. Police are investigating whether Sonera monitored the call records of its own employees in 2000 and 2001.
You certainly may, under certain loopholes.
For example, if you have a hotmail account and have unticked every box, to disallow them selling your email address/info/receiving spam - they won't reveal your email address
But they do sell the email address of every single person you email
Try this simple experiment. Sign up for an email address from anywhere else - somewhere you know is relatively spam-free. Check it for a month or two, and notice there is no spam. Send some emails to it from your own isp, from other relatively-spam-free accounts. Then send *one* email to it from a hotmail account. You then find you will be inundated with penis enlarging spams, university diplomas for free, and viagra.
The system doesn't work both ways. Anyone emailing TO you is giving out your email address to the companies handling those addresses, and they are NOT covered by opt-in, opt-out or opt-anything laws.
I agree, verizon's policies sucks enough as it is and I already get way to many unsolicited phone calls. Verizon has all kinds of rediculous fees like I didn't want long distance, so there is a fee to not have a carrier, and there is a fee for caller id blocking, why should I have to provide my number to everyone I call or pay the price. I mean come on for my local monthly service it is like 27 bucks and I am a starving college student so it is hard for me to afford that. Worst of all when I tried to switch there were no other local services, and the only cellphone sercive that I could get reception from is Verizon. If these aren't monopolistic plicies then what are. Why would the government help them, it should be helping me the consumer but unfortunatley I don't have political pull becuase I don't have money to buy it with, so I just end up getting screwed by all this service companies. Verizon sucks plain and simple but what can we do?
-kaplan
Visualize Whirled Peas
BTW if someone from Verizon is listening: I was just about to buy YOUR cellular phone service. This just guaranteed I won't. Have a nice day.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Is this the same Verizon that's fighting for the privacy rights of its DSL users?
I swear, modern corporations have some kind of severe split-personality disorder.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Okay, here's what I don't get. The new Homeland Security Bill just passed, which authorizes the government to construct a huge database that contains not just info about your calling patterns, but also about what websites you view, what books you read, everything you buy with your credit card, etc etc etc. Now, Verizon wants to use info about your calling patterns so they can offer you long distance savings, and you guys are reaching for your pitchforks. The government wants to use this info to decide whether or not to kick your door down, haul you off to an undiscolsed location, declare you an "enemy combatant" and thereby deny you any due process rights, like Jose Padilla, the "dirty bomber." Hey, no big deal, don't get excited about that, now. We got bigger fish to fry, right? Damn telemarketers.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The parent post is probably referring to the history of Australia and how convicts used to be sent there back in the 17/1800's. Hence how Australia used to be the "largest prison in the world". Obviously, it isn't anymore - but you can still insult Australians by asking if their ancestors had to pay to get there or had transport (the deportation). For more info, you may find these sites of use.
Hopefully this will not give USPS any ideas! They could get an almost perfect profile on you if they wanted. What about FedEx? They would know who bought what kind of stuff on the Internet and would be able to put together a superbly targeted direct mailing list for almost any business. The problem with FedEx is that the "stuff" is readily available in machine readable form.
Help fight continental drift.
Just a thought, but why can't this thing be legally stopped on the basis of Verizon (or my bank, mortage company, credit card issuer, etc) using my likeness without my permission? They're effectively selling my life story (cheaply, to be sure), and selling a statistical picture of me. I'm certainly not a public figure, so if someone took a picture of me in a non-public place (eg. my home), they couldn't sell it without my permission. So how feasible would it be to apply the same restrictions to my life's story and statistical profile? Any lawyers lurking?
Remain calm! All is well!
I was a Verizon customer up until a couple months ago . Since I enjoy a quality high speed cablemodem already, I signed up with Vonage. I "highly" recommend them to anybody who has the bandwidth to use their service.
They are not 100% perfect, but if/when something happens, they've made it a point to notify customers of what was going on. Without even complaining, I received a $5 refund for a 1 day outage. They also have very good customer reps that answer your email/calls quickly and professionally.
I never liked Verizon from the first time I moved into their service area. Their customer service seemed more wary of me as a new subscriber than happy to do business. I used their automated online system to order service, and they did not activate my phone service the day I requested. I called up to find out why, and they wanted me to pay $250 deposit. $250 deposit for phone service? WTF? That's at least 6 months worth of service. After bitching, they then offered to waive the deposit if I got my old phone company to right a "letter of recommendation" saying that I was a previous customer in good standing. Uhg.. pain in the ass, but worth saving $250.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
"Organize, resist, refuse! I paid $14 the other day for an item at Safeway that would have cost me $5 if they could have tracked it. Hopefully, I'll be able to continue to afford the fight."
OK, I agree with your thought - You seem to be using the "refuse" method in this case - I prefer "organize." What I do, and I invite you and all others reading this to join in - is share a card. I started one of those "club cards" with Safeway about a year ago and have since shared it with as many people as possible.
To my knowledge there are probably 12 or so households using this card, and probably more since many of my firends who use it also encourage others to share it. The wya I see it, this eliminates the tracking element of the card while avoiding the punishment of higher prices for not using the card.
So, I invite you and any other Slashdotters who shop at Safeway to use my card. Obviously they aren't going to give us enough copies of the same card to each carry one, so you need to enter it by phone number. The number I use is: 510-843-7226
It's easily remembered since it spells out 510 THE SCAM.
This is not my phone number, last I checked it was an unused number, but either way, I'd appreciate it if the current owners of the number didn't receive any silly prank phone calls as a result of this posting.
Thanks,
Russ
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
how most of you would react if it was anonymous tracking with no way to connect you specifically to the account. Say, for example, they tracked that a particular client made 3 calls in a day: one from a pizza parlour, one from a gas station, and one from a dry cleaners, but did not keep any information about that client except the age and gender. I don't think I would mind that at all, to be honest, and I would probably allow them to associate my age and gender with the information. I can't be tracked by it. I mean, do you have any idea how many 21 year old males there are in my city alone? And I'm not even in that big a city, only having 760,000 inhabitants.
... does not share call-detail outside its companies and needs to monitor calling habits to offer customers better deals on phone service. While I don't know if it's a particularly trustworthy source, it seems to me that they're on the level, since it would be counterproductive for them to sell information about your calling habits to the competition....
It's actually within the company's rights to sell that information, because all they're tracking is what hardware was used to connect to their networks, and where the connection was made. It's their information to sell. The point that most of you are concerned about, I think, is not that they're tracking where the hardware was used, but that they have the potential to track who belongs to that hardware.
From the article.... "We completely concede that customers' privacy must be protected," They also say that Verizon
I'd still insist on anonymity, but I don't think I would object to my phone company tracking my calling habits if it meant that I could save 5 bucks a month on my phone bill.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Are you ok with that?
qz
kids - I could not care less about Verizon sharing my information with their affiliates in order to sell me cheaper products.
After all, this amounts to essentially an annoyance as distinct from an invasion of privacy. The latter is a significantly stronger, higher and deeper concern on my list.
IOW, this is what they call small potatoes.
Where I am concerned is with the elephant in the room - the unfolding "Total Information Awareness" system that leaks information beyond corporate affiliates and to the Federal Government.
And, all kinds of information: medical, fiscal, e-mail content etc. etc. etc.
This is where our privacy and anti-information sharing energies should go, IMHO.
Those who give up their power willingly deserve none.
I was with Verizon for a few months. Midway through my service contract they suddenly, without warning, changed my plan on me. Mysteriously my "Nationwide Roaming" suddenly changed to "Roaming in California Only." Mysteriously my roaming charges, and charges for going over the monthly limit of minutes went from .15 and .10 respectively to something like .88 and .55 cents respectively. Mysteriously my 1000 mobile to mobile minutes with other Verizon customers seemed to go away.
After I discovered what happened (after I recieved an exorbidant phone bill one month that I travelled outside of California extensively), I checked my service agreement that I signed.
First of all, I had no barganing power on that service contract. Cell phone companies can put whatever they want there, and you have to sign it if you want a cell phone. Every company has a similar agreement. Even so, Verizon STILL seemed to break their contract with me.
Interestingly enough, it said that Verizon had to give me notice if they planned on altering the contract. They gave me no notice whatsoever.
I opened every single piece of mail they sent to me, and never once did I recieve such notice.
I couldn't get a straight answer from Verizon WHY my plan was changed on me, except that the plan I signed up for no longer existed. I wasn't sure exactly what plan I had been placed on, either, even from reading my bills and looking over every single one of their plans. On more than one occasion I was hung up on by Verizon's service representatives.
I cancelled my service and was billed $200 for early termination, even though my service agreement said I'd be billed $150. (Despite that fact, paying through the end of my contract would have still cost me more).
Instead of paying, I followed the proper instructions and immediately reported and challenged the high bills as well as the early termination fee to the Public Utilities Commission. I sent the entire contested amount to the Commission, as instructed, so that Verizon would be paid if they declined my request.
I properly informed Verizon that I was doing such as instructed so that I would not be considered late with my payments.
Along with the contested fees, I sent the Commission a copy of my service contract and a full explanation of why I believed Verizon broke its part of the service contract by not properly informing me that they were altering my service, and that I should not be subject to any early termination fees because they essentially breached their contract.
In the end the Public Utilities Commission declined my request. It took about a month.
The kicker is that even though Verizon was payed by the Commission, they charged me LATE FEES since it came to them a month later due to the whole ordeal.
I've checked a few web sites and other people's stories, and apparently similar things have happened to other Verizon customers, while it is rare. Many more complaints were made about their DSL service and landline telephone service on the east coast, however.
In one case Verizon overbilled a business DSL customer. Verizon dragged their feet for several months, and did not return the $700 or so they owed him.
If a customer owed $700 dollars to Verizon and then didn't pay for a few months, Verizon would no doubt have collection agencies on their ass.
My experiences and things conveyed to me by others who have been screwed by Verizon have convinced me that...
1) Verizion is comprised of bloodsuckers who use their service contracts as a right to screw anyone as they see fit.
2) Verizon's customer service representatives are either highly incompetent, don't care, or are ordered to seem that way. It can be tough to get information from them.
3) Appealing to the proper government authorities rarely does anything. I don't know why. Perhaps they view people who complain as being "slackers who don't want to pay their bills." Perhaps they are just too bogged down that they don't even read complaints. Perhaps they don't do anything since public officials recieve brib^H^H^H^H contributions from companies like Verizon.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I have a university account which, for 4 years has never received spam - mainly because only 5 or so people have the address (family, a couple of friends and girlfriend). For everything and everyone else I use a couple of free webmail accounts.
This summer my girlfriend was in europe, and set up an excite account so she could email friends while on vacation. Very shortly after getting email from her I started getting tons of spam, many with excite as a return address. I forwarded them to abuse and postmaster@excite and they bounced - mailbox full.
Finally I had to set up a server side filter that filters out anything from excite.com, but I still get several spams per day from other sources. There is no doubt in my mind that excite harvested my email address from the to field and sold it to spammers.
Two questions:
Who would have more weight?
Who should have more weight?
First, let me say that I wholeheartedly condemn Verison's blatant power grab here (no surprise hearing that on /., eh?)
I'm a little leery of any argument based on the notion that the majority is always right, and that the majority's rights are the most important. Sometimes it takes the efforts of a very determined minority (and very effective lobbying) to foist good policy on a stubborn majority. Laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, and so forth come to mind. Very unpopular when introduced in certain jurisdictions. Still unpopular in some, still not even in place in others.
~Idarubicin
My family were wealthy Romanians--until the Communist revolution swept Romania. Nicolae Ceausescu reduced my family to living in a one-room apartment. The Communists took away our farms, our vineyards, our factories, everything. Then my family came to the United States as refugees. They lived on 8 Mile Road in Detroit for a while (yes, yes, the same road that the movie was on, except they got it all wrong: 8 Mile Road is an immigrant road, not what it was in the movie), but now we live in a rich suburb of Philadelphia and are earning more money than we could ever imagine than if were living in America. So, remind me again, where is the oppression?
hmm.... Funny, I should ask my lawyer, priest, doctor to start pitching around my information to serve me better with crap I don't ask for. That would be responsible of them. No, business want to make money, this has nothing to do with serving anybody better. They only want to serve themselve at your cost.
In the same way Verizon should be able to use sales records, and other data to create new services and products and offer them to me. Perhaps I make a lot of long distance calls, but only in the evening after 9pm. Then they should call up and offer me a plan that takes advantage of that. Or maybe I make a lot of long distance calls during the day, and they have a flat-rate plan that gives me 500 minutes of long distance a month. They should call and offer me that.
No, they are going to sell it, not offer you better service plans. The only time they'll offer you a cheaper service plan is when you are with a competitor, not with them. There's no incentive to make you pay less money to them if they already have you. Case in point, call a credit card company and threaten to drop them, if you are a decent customer suddenly they'll offer you a better interest rate than you had before. They don't go out of their way for this type of thing, by themselves.
I don't have the time to check out every possible scenario available with every company out there. It's their job to take the data they have and then present me with their best offers.
That's your fault, but Ignorance is bliss. I pity you, if you believe this. You are an ignorant fool consumer that believes that the company will provide you with an unbiased picture of their and the competitors. If this was the case, I'd still be using IE with ten million pop-ups, instead of Mozilla. My business would be on Microbloat Windoze upgrade treadmill, along with hardware upgrades every two years, instead of that "user unfriendly, hard to learn, non-compatible" linux. And I would be buying the Windows Office suite, whose CD costs more than it's weight in gold instead of using the "only 99.5% perfect" Open Office.
Maybe I'll say no. In fact, I usually do say no. But at least I know that it is available. It isn't just phone companies either. Basically every company that does business should feel obligated to collect the information available to them and use it to serve the customer better
I don't want to have to say no, infact I don't want to have to say anything at all, leave me alone, I want to be the one starting the business transaction. Leave me alone, unless there is something wrong with my account. Don't deluge me and waste my time with crappy offers. Don't send me junkmail, unless your willing to pay my entire trash pick-up bill. Don't call me, unless you want to pay for a $120 an hour consulting fee. Don't serve me better, serve me what I ask for.