Let’s be clear: Verizon Wireless does not sell personal customer information to third-party advertisers.  Period.

The notice that was sent (and the cause of some buzz) simply alerts our customers that Verizon Wireless may share customer information with the Verizon group of companies. 

In other words, we are keeping all the data in question in the family – unless you tell us not to. 

Our customers are asking us for bundles that provide home and wireless services, and the sharing of information -- like where our wired network customers overlap with wireless -- allows us to provide these bundles.

We believe that it will benefit our customers to be able to share information with Verizon affiliates, so that they can receive information about all products and services that Verizon has to offer, including bundled offerings of Verizon Telecom and Verizon Wireless. Customers who don't want that information can tell us so, by “opting out”.

If a Verizon Wireless customer doesn't want his/her information shared in this way, Verizon Wireless will honor the customer's request.  Verizon Wireless has a long-standing policy of guarding personal customer information. 

The Opt-Out notices we're providing to our customers are so they can opt-out of our sharing their basic information with other Verizon companies, and that's it.  We're only asking customers whether they want to opt out now, because we wanted to make sure our back-office systems - I.T., customer service, etc. - were all ready to go to handle customer questions.

There's a right way to send Opt-Out notices; the FCC rules themselves prescribe specifically that opt-out is the way to share information with telecommunications affiliates, to market telecom services.  FCC rules also provide certain required language, which we followed.

FCC is also clear about this: you use "Opt-Out" with customers if you're looking to share across affiliates/parent companies, etc. - so customers would be getting information from within the same family of products/services.  "Opt-In" is required if a company were addressing the issue of sharing customer information beyond - for example to non-telecom services.  We aren't doing that.