Where does spam come from? We have a preconception that people in the spam business are shady characters operating out of back rooms, located in dark alleys in unmarked offices. They operate under the radar, have slicked-back hair and wear flashy suits. They have warehouses full of counterfeit Viagra, and hire hackers from Russia to create mailing lists and disseminate their bogus email ads.

While this may well describe some people in the spam business, it doesn’t describe all of them. My last entry noted how American Express has gotten into the spam business; today it’s Verizon. It seems spam is more of a corporate phenomenon than we realized.

Reports are floating around that Verizon has sent out a convoluted “notice” to all of its customers. You know the type of notice I’m talking about. It comes in the form of a small, tri-fold brochure, often included with the monthly bill. It’s all small print and text, and usually contains some legalese notice of some policy that most of us don’t care about. I for one, almost always ignore them. Most people do.

The pamphlet sets up a sort of backwards “opt-in” mechanism for sharing your private data. But you don’t actually “opt-in” by taking some sort of action, like checking a box on your bill. Rather, it’s a “negative opt-in”, which means if you don’t do anything to specifically “opt-out”, you agree to let Verizon share your personal data. Even, if like most people, you didn’t read the fine print and didn’t even realize that you were opting in to begin with, and had no idea that opting out was a possibility. Customers who get their bills online instead of in the mail don’t even get the notice.

Information Verizon may share includes what services you have purchased, your billing, technical, and location information. What’s even more alarming is the notice that purchased services may include “specific calls you make and receive.” Information can be shared with “affiliates, agents and parent companies.” That’s not very reassuring. “Affiliate” in particular is a very fuzzy term, and usually means any marketer who has signed up with a program and paid a fee.