Big broadband’s permission for, collection and use of customer info gets a federal review

5 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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The privacy practices of four major broadband service providers and one big disruptor are getting a hard look from the Federal Trade Commission. Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Google Fiber were given 45 days to produce detailed information about their business practices and subscribers, with particular emphasis on how they collect information about customers, whether it’s done with genuine permission, and what they do with it.

The information demanded by the FTC includes statistics on how many people actually read privacy policies, along with what promises to be a tall stack of those policies – every single one that’s been written by the companies, including copies that might be “different from the original because of notations on the copy”.

One particular concern of the FTC is whether the companies treat customers differently based on the degree of privacy they’re willing to surrender…

Has the Company ever offered different levels of service, quality of service, rates, pricing, rewards, or other incentives for consumers who opt-in to the collection of information about themselves, their Devices, their communications, their viewing history, or their online activities? If so, Describe in Detail such practices and produce Each materially different notice provided to consumers concerning the practice…

Has the Company ever denied service, or otherwise degraded the quality of service, for consumers who fail to opt-in to the collection of information about themselves, their Devices, their communications, their viewing history, or their online activities, beyond information that is necessary for the provision of Internet or cable services? If so, Describe in Detail such practices and produce Each materially different notice provided to consumers concerning the practice.

AT&T and Verizon will have to produce information about both their wireline and mobile subsidiaries. It’s probably a good assumption that Comcast will have to submit data about its wireless business practices too. One company that’s notably absent from the list is Charter Communications, which has nearly as big a market share as Comcast. Sprint is missing too, but it’s the smallest of the major mobile carriers and might not be around much longer anyway.

Intentional or not, the FTC’s fishing – whaling – expedition is a welcome response to a damning assessment by the federal general accounting office assessment that the agency is largely clueless about the online world.