Verizon agreed to pay $7.4 million to settle...
Verizon agreed to pay $7.4 million to settle an FCC investigation into allegations the company used customers’ personal information to tailor marketing campaigns without providing required opt-out notices, the Enforcement Bureau announced Wednesday. The personal information was used without notice…
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and without the customers’ consent, said an order (http://bit.ly/1qyPtZD) adopted Tuesday and released Wednesday. The practice affected about 2 million customers over the past eight years, the agency said. Verizon, under a consent decree, will place an opt-out notice on every electronic or paper invoice to every customer for whom Verizon relies on opt-out consent, the release said. The company will also designate a senior corporate manager as a compliance officer, begin immediately notifying the officer about any problems detected with opt-out notices, and develop and implement a three-year compliance plan, the agency said. Verizon “inadvertently” did not provide an FCC notice to some “wireline customers before they received marketing materials from Verizon for other Verizon services that might be of interest to them,” the company said in a statement. “It did not involve a data breach or an unauthorized disclosure of customer information to third parties. Verizon takes seriously its obligation to comply with all FCC rules, and once we discovered the issue with the notices we informed the FCC, fixed the problem and implemented a number of measures to ensure it does not recur.” Verizon collects personal information about its customers’ services and their calling habits, like how many calls a customer makes, and where they are when they make a call, the FCC said. It must get express permission from the customer to use personally identifiable information to market new services, and provide information on how to opt out, the release said. Verizon failed to generate opt-out notices, since as early as 2006, for about 2 million customers, the release said. “These failures deprived those customers of information about Verizon’s marketing practices and its customers’ right to deny Verizon permission to access or use their personal data to market new Verizon services to those customers,” the FCC said. Verizon also took several months to notify the commission about problems with the opt-out system, instead of the required five business days, the release said.