If you’re a Verizon customer, you’ll want to read this. Verizon has automatically opted all customers into a new program which allows them to share your information with just about anyone they want. Apparently some customers are receiving a notice via mail but for some reason I did not and others haven’t received one either. Verizon is clearly hoping to keep this under the radar.

Here is the legal language from Verizon:

Verizon Wireless and its affiliates (the “Verizon Companies”) provide services to you. In doing so, we may each collect certain information that is made available to us solely by virtue of our relationship with you, such as quantity, technical configuration, type, destination, location and amount of use of the telecommunications services you purchase. This information and related billing information is known as Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI). The Federal Communications Commission and other regulators require the Verizon Companies to protect your CPNI.

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.

Interesting that they say they “need your permission” to share your information, yet they launched this program with the system set to automatically grant permission from all of us. We have to explicitly deny them permission, assuming we even find out they’ve done this.

To keep your information private, follow these instructions.

1. Login to your Verizon account at www.verizonwireless.com
2. Click on the My Profile tab
3. Under the Phone Controls section (lower half of the page) click on the View/Edit Privacy(CPNI) Settings link
4. Click the Don’t Share My CPNI option
5. Click Submit

I’ve been a Verizon customer for over 5 years but I just lost a lot of respect for them and am now more likely to consider switching services.