Verizon Wireless Opt-Out Plan For Customer Records

An anonymous reader writes to let us know that Verizon Wireless is planning to share its customers' calling records (called CPNI) with "our affiliates, agents and parent companies (including Vodafone) and their subsidiaries." The article explains that CPNI "includes the numbers of incoming and outgoing calls and time spent on each call, among other data." Some subscribers, it's not known if it's all of them, received a letter in the mail giving them 30 days to opt out of this sharing by calling 1-800-333-9956. Skydeck, a mobile and wireless services company, seems to have been the first to call attention to the Verizon initiative on their blog; they also posted a scan of the letter (sideways PDF) from Verizon.

current versus past customers

[goombah99]

When I hear things like that I always wonder how they handle past customer data. Those folks are not being given any "opt out" provision. Same as when companies get bought or sold off for parts. Current customers of course are respected since they have value but past customers are only worth the data you can mine out of them.

Re:Pretty painless

[rtconner]

It's just evil that they make you do it at all.

just another example...

[WwWonka]

...of corporate (a)merica truly getting out of hand.

This scenario is much like a criminal going to commit a crime no matter what, but he won't if you get his letter in the mail and then take steps and waste your time to tell him not too. Just so many things wrong with this story, but unfortunately not shocking and of course NO ONE will do anything to stop this trend in the country other than bitch and moan.

Re:Pretty painless

[CosmeticLobotamy]

Saves you from having to enter your SSN every time.

I haven't called, but I'm gathering from you that they ask you to enter it once? They send a piece of mail (with their logo on it, so you know it's really them) to you asking you to call a number that could be anyone and ask you to enter your social security number? Thanks, Verizon, for making identity theft even easier.

Because an OPT IN would be the right thing to do

[JackMeyhoff]

Because an OPT IN would be the right thing to do, but that would require morals wouldn't it.

Re:just another example...

[krazytekn0]

so what are you doing? Besides bitching and moaning.... I just finished my letter to my congressman. How bout you?

Re:Initial versus second reaction

[butlerdi]

What am I missing?

A clue ?

Re:Pretty painless

[Gwyn_232]

It doesn't matter how easy it is, that's not the point. In pretty much every western country, except for the US, this would be totally illegal. It amazes me how Americans seem (on the whole) totally content with not having any data protection laws.

New Verizon Patent

[freelunch]

In the preferred embodiment a method of fucking over customers is described whereby private customer data is disclosed to third parties for profit.

Re:Because an OPT IN would be the right thing to d

[ScrewMaster]

Corporations, like governments, are amoral by definition. Opt-in would require business ethic, of which Verizon has repeatedly shown it has little. To be fair, the same applies to AT&T/SBC, Comcast, AOL, and any of the other big boys.

The people who consume the goods and services provided by the likes of Verizon have become less important than the companies willing to pay to mine customer databases. There's a lot of money in that, which means quality-of-service levels (and corresponding expenses) can be reduced while maintaining profitability. If that kind of information-sharing were simply illegal, perhaps our communications providers would have to get back to worrying themselves about what their customers want.

Re:Time to switch

[jeffasselin]

a corporation helping its government to spy is bad?
something else?

I'd think that a corporation helping its government spy illegally is bad. If the spying is done in a legal, constitutional way, with a judge overseeing the procedures, I don't think most people would object.

It wasn't a separate letter

[Anonymous Coward]

It was one of those bill-stuffers that people tend to ignore.

Re:Time to switch

[mi]

I'd think that a corporation helping its government spy illegally is bad.

First of all, let's clear a few things out of this — you would not approve of anyone helping anyone doing anything illegal, would you? Spying, growing weed, downloading music without permission, having an abortion (illegal in many countries)?..

Because if, in your opinion, some things just "ought to be legal" (and thus it is Ok to do them, even if they aren't), then, certainly, it can be argued, that NSA's spying on strongly suspected enemies (abroad) is not particularly wrong. And, of course, any body helping their government defeat the enemies is a good and upstanding citizen (or corporation).

Unlike with music downloads and other matters of entertainment, waiting for the due course of legalization to run just may not be an option in the matters of terrorism (or, indeed, abortion).

Re:Time to switch

[Rick Genter]

OP is dropping one telco thats sells your personal data for another that openly admits to outright spying on you...

There, fixed that for you.

You're naive if you think AT&T is the only carrier assisting various TLAs.

Why does your cell phone company need your SSN?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is so much bullshit. This should be opt-in.

Actually, it should just be illegal.

Re:Time to switch

[Chandon Seldon]

The government breaking the law and private citizens breaking the law are radically different things. The government is an artificial structure defined by the law - if it breaks that law, then it can no longer be trusted to serve it's intended purpose rather than some unwanted purpose. And when a government is serving unwanted and unintended purposes that's a very bad thing.

Re:Time to switch

[Chandon Seldon]

merely helped its government intercept phone conversations with (strongly) suspected foreign terrorists.

Basically every single person in the country trusts their private conversations to telecom companies. If a telecom company breaks that trust and shares those conversations with a government agency (without a court-issued warrant), they damn well deserve to lose business over it.

Re:Time to switch

[NeverVotedBush]

There are many ways the NSA could abuse the information - one is by building contact lists of who calls who. This is precisely what they want to do in the name of fighting terror, but they get the same lists of people in various political parties, with ties to groups that expose various embarassing things about political leaders, have viewpoints that differ from their own or those in power (i.e. that the Iraq war is a total clusterf#ck waste of money and lives), whatever.

From there it is easy to decide who to focus on more closely to try to find anything else they want for use now or in the future.

You do remember that the Nixon administration had its famous "enemies list" that it used to target people for various forms of harassment - IRS audits, FBI investigations, etc. So don't tell me it can't happen. It already has. And I can guarantee you that an administration that implemented NSA spying - AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION OF THE USA - 7 months BEFORE 9/11 - would be more than happy to misuse that information.

Go ahead and say it's tinfoil hat time, but this administration (they ARE the ones pushing the NSA to help fight terra') has done more to spy on the American public wholesale than any other. Bar none. They have done more that is contrary to the Constitution and have by many Constitutional scholar's violated more than any other administration in history.

One day, you might realize that this administration is not a democracy and doesn't really want a democracy. They just want power to run their games.

Re:Time to switch

[Rakishi]

Well, if you'd actually read any history, you would know, that not only illegal wiretaps were authorized by the "war president" Roosevelt, but also a few apparent rub-outs of American citizens by foreign (British) secret agencies.

That was also wrong, just because it has been done in the past doesn't mean it is a good thing.

But do tell me, how NSA (or its clients) could've abused the gathered information.

You mean how they can use unlimited information on all phone calls made by US citizens, because that is what they have. If you believe that somehow "terrorism": has to be involved then you're a fool, after all the whole point of there being no safety measure sis that no one is there to verify why the information is used.

Some of the more interesting uses are against perfectly legal opponents of the current government and it's policies. For example democrats, peace protectors, socialists, proponents of socialized medicine and so on. There is a history for such abuses of power by presidents in the past. If you don't realize the uses of knowing what your political rivals plan to do then you are an idiot.

Sure -- abortions kill far more, for example. About a million every year in US alone, you know... Mmm, what a flamebait...

Sure and exterminators kill billions of mice, rats and insects every year. Doctors kill trillions of cancer cells every year. Nonetheless there is nothing wrong with it, after all murder and killing are very different things. Abortion is not murder in the same way that killing an isect or removing some cancer cells isn't murder.

Re:Because an OPT IN would be the right thing to d

[Speare]

This is why I find it important to distinguish from consumer and customer. The customer is always right. The consumer is just a resource. Problem is, we are the consumer. The corporation on the other end of the data-mining business is the customer.

You can keep Euro cellphone billing.

[Kadin2048]

The U.S. system seems screwy for text messages, but it makes sense for voice calls. The caller pays for the cost of the call on the POTS system to whatever exchange the cellular number is in. Then the person with the cellphone pays for the airtime to transmit that call over the cellular network to their handset. (And they pay for the airtime whether the call is outgoing or incoming; what they're paying for is the circuit, not really the 'call.') This means, if the call originates from the same area that the cellphone's number is in, the caller pays next to nothing, since it's a local call. In fact, they have no way of knowing, just by looking at the number, whether it's a cell or landline. There's no difference in the U.S. between a "cellular number" and a "regular number."

It doesn't strike me as illogical. If it cost people more to call cellphones than landlines, the uptake of cellphones would have been a lot slower. I certainly wouldn't be able to use a cellphone as my primary business line, since it would be obnoxious to charge people more (and, hence, discourage them from calling me) because I want the ability to take calls on the road.

The U.S. pricing structure means that text messages are a bad deal (which is why they're little used here compared to in Europe), but it also sped the adoption of cell phones to many people who wouldn't have bought them otherwise, particularly business users, and it prevented people from consciously avoiding making calls to cell phones because of the expense. It puts the expense of owning a cellphone on the person who wants the convenience of being mobile, rather than on the caller.