Verizon is sneaking in a crafty new marketing tactic at the expense of their customers privacy in the near future. All Verizon customers should have received a notice of a change in terms of service earlier this month which indicates that they will be sharing your Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) data unless you call a toll free number to tell them that you do not want your CPNI data shared. During this process, your forced to provide Verizon all sorts of information to verify that you’re actually you (including the last four digits of your social security number) because they don’t want to make this easy!

I think it is important to define what CPNI is so that everyone knows what information about you Verizon wants to share to third parties. The definition I’m giving below is directly from the CPNI FAQ provided by Verizon. It says,

Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) is information created by virtue of the relationship between a carrier and a customer, including the quantity, technical configuration, type, destination, location, and amount of use of a customer’s telecommunications services purchased (including specific calls a customer makes and receives) and related local and toll billing information. It does not include information such as one’s name, address or telephone number.

Did you catch the part that says “specific calls a customer makes and receives?” That bothers me! To make this whole thing even worse Verizon does their best in the notice to make you believe that their doing this to better serve you. Yeah right, they’re doing this to make money by selling your private information to third parties who in turn want to sell you their junk.

We all know that hardly anyone reads the terms of service, so I felt that it was might duty to share this information with my readers. I bookmarked the Ars Technica article on ma.gnolia that tipped me off about this and also dugg the story on digg. Before spreading the word, I did check the notice I had received in the mail to ensure that the story was true because all too often false information spread quickly through out the Internet. Unfortunately, this story is true.

Anyway, the number to opt out is 1-800-333-9956. Please tell are your friends and family who are stuck with have Verizon as their cellular phone provider.