Your Loss of Privacy Is a Package Deal
By David Lazarus
Newsday

The all-you-can-eat packages of voice, video and Internet services offered by phone and cable companies may be convenient, but they represent a potentially significant threat to people’s privacy. Take, for example, Time Warner Cable, which has about 2 million customers in Southern California. The company offers a voice-video-Net package called “All the Best” for $89.85 for the first 12 months.

But for anyone who has the wherewithal to read Time Warner’s 3,000-word California privacy policy, you discover that not only does the company have the ability to know what you watch on TV and whom you call, but also that it can track your online activities, including sites you visit and stuff you buy.

Remember all the fuss when it was revealed last year that Google Inc. kept voluminous records of people’s Web searches, and that federal authorities were demanding a peek under the hood? Multiply that privacy threat by three. Internet, TV, phone — it’s hard to imagine a more revealing glimpse of your private life. “All your eggs are in one communications basket,” said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. “If a company wants to, it can learn a great deal about you — and it probably wants to.”

More often than not, it’ll also want to turn a fast buck by selling at least a portion of that info to marketers. Find the privacy policies of three providers:

AT&T U-Verse: https://uverse1.att.com/launchAMSS.do
Time Warner Cable: http://help.twcable.com/html/twc_privacy_notice_CA.html
Verizon FiOS TV: http://www22.verizon.com/about/privacy/fiosprivacy/

Read the rest of the Newsday report Here