Comcast, AT&T will not sell US customers’ data

By Barry Eitel

SAN FRANCISCO

Comcast and AT&T will not sell customers’ browsing data to advertisers, the companies said Friday.

The pair of separate announcements follow growing backlash after Congress voted to revoke a set of privacy rules that prohibit Internet Service Providers such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T, from selling customer web browsing data and search histories.

The House of Representatives approved the bill earlier this week, after similar action in the Senate, and it is now headed to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign off on the legislation.

While Republican supporters claim the older rules were an unnecessary burden on businesses, the ruling was immediately awash in criticism from all sides of the political spectrum.

Many turned their ire toward companies pushing for the change, which included Comcast and AT&T.

The companies took notably different approaches in their official responses. Comcast was far friendlier in its messaging and made sought to assure critics.

“We do not sell our broadband customers’ individual web browsing history,” Gerard Lewis, a senior vice president at Comcast, said in the statement. “We did not do it before the FCC’s rules were adopted, and we have no plans to do so.”

AT&T, on the other hand, was far more defensive in its condemnation of the old rules.

“AT&T’s privacy protections are the same today as they were five months ago when the FCC rules were adopted,” the company’s public policy chief Bob Quinn said in a statement. “We had the same protections in place the day before the Congressional resolution was passed, and we will have the same protections the day after President Trump signs the [legislation] into law. The Congressional action had zero effect on the privacy protections afforded to consumers,” the statement added.