Mich. Attorney Gen. Jennifer Granholm and AARP urged SBC/Ameritec...

than Ameritech were sending out account privacy notices and warned all phone customers to pay attention to any notices their carrier might send with bills. She cited “special notice” Verizon was sending to customers with their Feb. bills that advised them to call toll-free number to opt out of account information sharing with Verizon affiliates. Granholm said Verizon discussed its sharing plans with her staff and program was under review. Ameritech so far says it’s continuing with plan to share customer account information within corporate family to help improve customer service, but insists information won’t be shared with unaffiliated 3rd parties to market their products. Granholm said many Ameritech affiliates such as Cingular Wireless, Pacific Bell and Prodigy might as well be 3rd parties as far as customers could tell. She said privacy notices Ameritech sent to customers were confusing and failed to communicate enough accurate information so users could make informed privacy decision. AARP said restricting telephone account information to affiliates still opened customers to marketing of wide variety of services. AARP urged FCC to ensure by its privacy rules that customers had chance to make informed decisions on release of sensitive account information. Qwest last week admitted it hadn’t done good job of explaining its opt-out privacy policy and dropped its plans to share account information with affiliates until after FCC issued new rules on privacy.