Verizon fined $7m for using customer's personal info for marketing - Polidicks

[QUOTE]Verizon has agreed to pay a $7.4 million penalty after the company failed to tell 2 million customers they could opt out of having their personal information used for marketing purposes, according to federal regulators. The fine is the largest ever levied by the Federal Communications Commission on a phone company over a privacy misstep. The FCC is also requiring that Verizon notify customers about their ability to opt out of marketing on every single bill they receive. "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,” said Travis LeBlanc, the acting chief of the FCC's enforcement bureau. For six years, according to the FCC, Verizon failed to notice that it was sending out first-time bills to new customers that didn't include opt-out notices. It wasn't until September 2012 that the company noticed anything was amiss — and then it took another four months for Verizon to disclose the problem to the FCC. Federal regulations call on companies to report any billing problems within five days of discovery[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/09/03/verizon-failed-to-tell-2-million-people-it-was-using-their-personal-info-for-marketing-now-the-fcc-is-making-it-pay/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost[/url]

That fine is literally nothing compared to the money they probably have made off those 2 million customers.

Whats sad is they're being fined so little for such a massive corporation [quote]The fine is the largest ever levied by the Federal Communications Commission on a phone company over a privacy misstep.[/quote] Whats even more sad is that this is the largest fine ever handed out for something like this.

Verizon simply laughs at being fined 7 million dollars for something like this. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw this again in the future. If you want people to care, you have to fine the fuck out of them. If you're talking about Verizon, it's going to take a hell of a lot more than 7 million dollars to get their attention.

How about instead we file a proper anti-trust suit against Verizon and AT&T? Also while we're at it why not just make the mobile network a government owned entity, thus every phone company would have equal coverage and actually have to compete with each other instead of just monopolizing regions based on their usually shitty coverage.

They could do it like phone lines and just be the one who handles the networks. I like that idea

7 mill is nothing for them

Shoulda gone the BoA route and fined them into a fucking loss

"Don't worry, we can fit this in the marketing budget."

[QUOTE=Squerl101;45881875]Verizon simply laughs at being fined 7 million dollars for something like this. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw this again in the future. If you want people to care, you have to fine the fuck out of them. If you're talking about Verizon, it's going to take a hell of a lot more than 7 million dollars to get their attention.[/QUOTE] My bet is 7 million feels like 70 bucks to them, perhaps even less.

[QUOTE=Merijnwitje;45882652]My bet is 7 million feels like 70 bucks to them, perhaps even less.[/QUOTE] verizon is worth 206 billion. so yea

They shouldn't do fines like this they should do it on a percentage of they're earnings.