FCC Fines Verizon $7.4 Million Over Six-Year Privacy Rights ‘IT Glitch’
The number of IT snafus, problems and burps moved back to a more normal rate last week. There were a surprising number of coincidental outages that hit Apple, eBay, Tumblr and Facebook, but other than these, the most interesting IT Hiccup of the Week was the news that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined Verizon Communications a record $7.4 million for failing to notify two million customers of their opt-out rights concerning the use of their personal information for certain company marketing campaigns.
According to the Washington Post, Verizon is supposed to inform new customers via a notice in their first bill that they could opt-out of having their personal information used by the company to craft targeted marketing campaigns of products and services to them. However, since 2006, Verizon failed to include the opt-out notices.
More: FCC Fines Verizon $7.4 Million Over Six-Year Privacy Rights ‘IT Glitch’ - IEEE Spectrum