Some of Qwest Communications' customers are angry over the latest mailing from the company, and it's not because of the size of the bill.
The company recently sent its customers a pamphlet similar to those distributed last year by financial institutions, describing the ways that Qwest will use the customer's personal data. Other phone carriers will be sending out notices as well, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
But the breadth of the Qwest statement has privacy advocates upset. It says that unless customers contact the company to specifically prohibit it, Qwest will share with its several subsidiaries such data as telephone services used, billing information and places called.
"Friends and neighbors to whom I've spoken are simply incredulous about the idea that what Qwest is doing could possibly be legal," said Brett Glass, a technology consultant and author in Wyoming. He said the notice led him to imagine invasions of privacy, such as new floods of junk mail from travel agents offering fares to the places that he calls.
A Qwest spokesman explained that the privacy statement simply lays out existing policies, and that the disclosures have all been approved by federal courts. In 1999, the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver overruled the Federal Communications Commission, which would have allowed such information to be shared only if customers had given explicit approval beforehand.
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