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 (560566)]

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.

How you could have handled it...

[bagofbeans (567926)]

By letter, template below. Usually, only a letter is legalling binding.

YOUR ADDRESS HERE

DATE

A/C Number: aaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to close my ISSUING COMPANY NAME Visa/Mastercard credit card account aaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd. I enclose the one/two issued card(s), cut into pieces.

I have sent a check separately to pay the $$$$.cc balance outstanding on the current statement. I agree to pay for any transactions authorized by me that I have missed in my calculations as soon as you advise me of them.

Any further transactions to the credit card account aaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd are not authorised by me, and I instruct you not to accept any further purchases or other debits to the account.

I also request that you remove me from your direct mail marketing lists and do not share my name, address, telephone, transaction, and other personal details with ISSUING COMPANY NAME's marketing affiliates or other organisations.

Yours faithfully,

YOUR FULL NAME

Pretty painless

[Russ Nelson (33911)]

It's pretty painless to do. You need to have your account details, and you have to jump through a separate hoop for each number, but at least they retain your context from hoop to hoop. Saves you from having to enter your SSN every time.

Re:Pretty painless

[rtconner (544309)]

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

Re:Pretty painless

[CosmeticLobotamy (155360)]

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.

Re:Pretty painless

[reset_button (903303)]

I just called. You need to enter your phone number, billing zip code, and the last 4 digits of your SS#.

Re:Pretty painless

[PPH (736903)]

Actually, you have to give them the SSN that you made up back when you signed up for service originally.

Re:Pretty painless

[Gwyn_232 (585793)]

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.

They'd be crucified if they did this in Europe...

[cLive ;-) (132299)]

I can't believe the shit companies can get away with over here. Call me paranoid, but I think my next cellphone will be another pay-as-you-go under someone else's name.

Actually. Maybe that would be a good business idea. Buy a PAYG phone and swap SIMS with someone at random. Maybe make it so you mail them on every few months. For the truly paranoid...

Re:They'd be crucified if they did this in Europe.

[Jah-Wren Ryel (80510)]

Swapping SIMs == swapping phone numbers.

Not if you use something like GrandCentral.com.

Of course the smart-ass response is, do you trust Google more than Verizon?

just another example...

[WwWonka (545303)]

...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.

Opt-out should be illegal

[kybred (795293)]

Opt-out for this kind of thing should be illegal. I should have to opt-in to allow this, but of course few people would so it might not be worth it to the companies. Which is why they use opt-out.

Here's my favorite part:

[r_jensen11 (598210)]

In order to better serve your communications needs and to identify, offer and provide products and services to meet your requirements, we need your permission to share this information among our affiliates, agents and parent companies (including Vodafone) and their subsidiaries... You have a right to keep your CPNI private by "opting out." Unless you provide us with notice that you wish to opt out within 30 days of receiving this letter, we will assume that you give Verison Companies the right to share your CPNI with the authorized companies as described above.

I know this is common practice, but I'd still like to believe that this would be a non-binding contract. Especially since there's no mutual consideration. Here's an excerpt from the Michigan Law Review regarding Silence as Acceptance of an Offer:

It is generally held that an offeree has a right to make no reply to offers, and that his silence and inaction cannot be construed as an assent to the offer. This is true even though the offer states that silence will be taken as consent, for the offeror cannot prescribe conditions of rejections so as to turn silence on the part of the offeree into acceptance.

The Virginia Law Review continues to talk about when silence is binding:

Where the offeror acts to his detriment in reasonable reliance on the offeree's conduct, the offeree's inaction, will be deemed an acceptance after he has remained silent for a reasonable length of time.

The difference here, though is that Verizon isn't acting to its detriment, they're going to be getting a big fat cheque out of this from a 3rd party. So, once again, it goes back to mutual consideration.

Re:Here's my favorite part:

[spiritraveller (641174)]

I know this is common practice, but I'd still like to believe that this would be a non-binding contract. Especially since there's no mutual consideration. Here's an excerpt from the Michigan Law Review regarding Silence as Acceptance of an Offer:

Contract has nothing to do with it. Obviously, you can't send someone a letter and form a contract just because they didn't bother to respond. The reason they can get away with this is because they have Congress in the palm of their hands.

It was just a few years ago that everyone was up in arms about companies sharing our personal information. Congress was pressured to create some regulations to stop it. Instead of going for an "Opt-in Rule" where companies would only be allowed to share or sell your information if you affirmatively acted in telling them it was ok, they passed an "Opt-out Rule."

Under the current scheme, all a company has to do is tell you about it's information sharing policies and give you an opportunity to Opt-out. They don't need a contract. They don't need a meeting of the minds, consideration, offer and acceptance or anything but your silence. If you don't want your information shared, you'll need to get busy and start notifying every company you've ever done business with. You can thank Congress for this.

Verizon trying to bypass FCC mandate?

[by Anonymous Coward]

It seems that Verizon is trying to sidestep the 12/2/07 deadline for new rules regarding CPNI. Earlier this year, the FCC decided to change the CPNI rules for carriers (both wireless and wireline) to try and beef-up the security around the call details that these carriers handle: http://www.ipbusinessmag.com/departments.php?department_id=6&article_id=23 [ipbusinessmag.com]

One thing that is clear from the FCC ruling is that "The FCC changed this requirement to mandate that customers obtain "opt-in" approval from their customers prior to sharing CPNI with their joint venture partners and independent contractors for marketing purposes only." Verizon shouldn't be able to have a global "opt-in" through silence, unless they're trying to get that recorded before the more stringent policy goes into effect in December.

How about calls I made to Verizon customers?

[forsetti (158019)]

I am not a Verizon customer, but have made calls to many Verizon customers, and have received calls from many Verizon customers. Using only Verizon data, one would be able to reconstruct quite a bit of my calling patterns. Can I call Verizon, and have them withhold calls involving my phone number(s) ?

Re:Time to switch

[moosesocks (264553)]

I've always found it at least mildly disturbing that Verizon makes AT&T look good. I mean... this is Death-star-logo-sells-your-conversations-to-the-NSA AT&T we're talking about.

I was actually on with AT&T Wireless before they were Cingular, and they actually were *very* nice to us. Even once they were Cingular, their customer service was great even though they did sort of alienate their former AT&T customers. A few of the price plans that the old AT&T had right before being absorbed into Cingular were far better then anything Cingular or Verizon have ever offered. If you wanted to modify your plan, however, you had to switch to a Cingular plan which would inevitably cost you more money. There were a few tricks for getting new phones out of the deal as well, although it got a lot harder over time. Still.... you have to give them major props for honoring the plan -- I held onto it for a few years after the merger. You also didn't have to pay for incoming text messages on any plan, something that no other US carrier does to my knowledge (most European countries have legislation which forces the caller to pay for both sides of the conversation, making incoming calls and SMS free)

However, as time went on, Verizon improved its coverage in my area, while there were no improvements in GSM service. Frustrated by not being able to get a signal at home, I switched to Verizon. A year and a half down the road, and I'm fed up to the point where I'm switching back the day my contract runs out. I've been overbilled, had my service disconnected, had my plan changed without my consent, and Verizon gave my old number to somebody else after they "lost" it while porting. And of course, in order to resolve any of this, you either have to call them and wait on hold for hours on end, or visit one of their stores -- which are more and more resembling the DMV these days (I've seen actual fights break out on more than one occasion).

You can keep Euro cellphone billing.

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

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.

Re:Time to switch - all telcos suck

[mikeraz (12065)]

We need the Mutt Telco. "All telcos suck, mutt telco sucks less."

Re:Time to switch

[jeffasselin (566598)]

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.

Re:Time to switch

[Chandon Seldon (43083)]

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:

[butlerdi (705651)]

What am I missing?

A clue ?

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

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

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

[Speare (84249)]

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.

Verizon trying to bypass FCC mandate?

[by Anonymous Coward]

It seems that Verizon is trying to sidestep the 12/2/07 deadline for new rules regarding CPNI, however, I don't see how exactly this accomplishes that goal. Earlier this year, the FCC decided to change the CPNI rules for carriers (both wireless and wireline) to try and beef-up the security around the call details that these carriers handle: http://www.ipbusinessmag.com/departments.php?department_id=6&article_id=23 [ipbusinessmag.com]

One thing that is clear from the FCC ruling is that "The FCC changed this requirement to mandate that customers obtain "opt-in" approval from their customers prior to sharing CPNI with their joint venture partners and independent contractors for marketing purposes only." Verizon shouldn't be able to have a global "opt-in" through silence, unless they're trying to get that recorded before the more stringent policy goes into affect in December.