Verizon's illegal invasion of privacy.

[Jamesfk13]

I would just like to make everyone aware of Verizon's recent invasion of privacy on unwitting customers.

Here are a few excerpts from a recent article with the link.

FCC fines Verizon for violating customers' privacy

Verizon is in hot water with federal regulators for showing customers ads based on their personal information without first obtaining consent.

"It is plainly unacceptable for any phone company to use its customers' personal information for thousands of marketing campaigns without even giving them the choice to opt out," Travis LeBlanc, the FCC's acting enforcement director, said in a statement.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/03/technology/mobile/verizon-fcc/index.html

If you log onto your account and go to documents and receipts you will see a document titled Verizon' selects participation agreement. This "agreement" and I use that term loosely considering I never agreed to anything, gives Verizon "permission" to access information such as:

Addresses of websites you visit when using our wireless service.  These data strings (or URLs) may include search terms you have used.

Location of your device.

Apps and device feature usage.

Demographic, interest and behavior characteristics provided to us by other companies, such as gender, age range, sports fan, pet owner, shopping preferences, and ad responses.

Demographic, interest and behavior characteristics developed by Verizon.

Information about the quantity, type, destination, location, and amount of use of your Verizon voice services and related billing information (also known as Customer Proprietary Network Information or “CPNI”).

Other information about your use of Verizon products and services (such as data and calling features and use, FiOS service options, equipment and device types).

Verizon Selects will use your information to provide relevant marketing messages through a variety of marketing media such as postal mail, email, text, Internet, and mobile advertising. 

You can discontinue participating or set your preferences at any time by visiting www.vzw.com/VerizonSelects.

[Ledsteplin · Accepted solution]

When I went to the Verizon Selects site, it said, "You are currently not enrolled in Verizon Selects. To participate, sign up below.". I think this is voluntary. If you are signed up, then you must have done the signing up at some point. In any event, it's not a big deal. You get ads either way. With Verizon Selects, they are tailored to your needs. iAds in the iPhone's Safari and some Apps are the same. Google does it. You're trying to make something out of nothing.

[#3]

YAWN. If you don't trust Verizon why be a customer? I doubt Verizon can tailor ads to a lot of the sites I visit.