Verizon is infamous for being a little bit draconian in some of their customer policies over the years. Most of the time, Big Red offers good value for customers, especially considering the high quality of their network. Despite that, sometimes they aren't too consumer friendly in their attempts to find new revenue sources. From extraneous extra fees to pushing customers off of unlimited data plans, their a multiple ways that Verizon has angered their customers over the years.
One example of that can be found in their aggressive advertising data mining practices. In fact, Verizon just lost a recent case with the FCC over an old issue in which the company was tracking its subscribers data habits secretly and without an option to opt out. This was back in 2014, and Sherlock Holmes might call it "the case of the inedible super-cookies."
Basically, Verizon's super-cookies tracked every unencrypted website customers visited with their Verizon network mobile device. Furthermore, it was not initially disclosed to customers, and didn't have an opt-out option (at first). Eventually this special tracking cookie was found by hackers and Verizon was called out. The case went to the FCC, and, even though Verizon has since improved their super-cookie policies, it still resulted in a fine against Verizon.
Of course, the fine turned out to be not even the equivalent of a slap on the wrist. The fine was a meager $1.35 million, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the $34 billion in revenue, and $5.5 billion in profit that Verizon made in their fourth quarter alone. Despite the paltry fine, at least the FCC's process has forced Verizon to clean up their act.
One other good thing will become of this. Apparently the FCC will be announcing later this month that they have worked new consumer protection policies to specifically address this type of anti-consumer behavior.
Source: NYTimes
