Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon say they don't sell customers' personal web browsing history, in response to cancellation of new FCC privacy rules
Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon published blog posts this morning responding to the backlash they've been receiving since Congress voted to revoke …
Context & Ripple Effects
Congress voted to revoke the FCC's broadband privacy rules before they took effect, and the resulting backlash forced Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon into damage control: each published a blog post this morning denying that it sells customers' personal web browsing history. The pledges are voluntary by design — with the rules cancelled, there is no regulator enforcing them.
The denials land awkwardly against the carriers' own track record in the related coverage: days later The Verge reported Verizon is positioned to exploit an 'impotent FCC' for ad targeting, building on its earlier supercookies practice, and months afterward the same three companies offered only soft, non-binding language when asked to commit on net neutrality. Two years on, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon would again be writing to the FCC — this time pledging they had stopped selling customer geo-location data to third parties.
First-order effects
- Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon are absorbing immediate reputational damage from the repeal vote, and their blog posts are the direct cost of that backlash — assurances now stand in place of the cancelled rules as the only consumer protection on browsing history.
Second-order effects
- Verizon's reported push toward ad-tracking built on consumer data puts its own no-sale pledge under scrutiny, since the company's supercookies history shows carrier data monetization has preceded exactly these kinds of promises.
- With no FCC rule to hide behind, the carriers' voluntary commitments become the benchmark competitors are measured against — the same dynamic that soon had nine ISPs issuing carefully hedged responses on blocking and throttling rather than firm pledges.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, ISP privacy conduct gets governed by press-release pledges and letters to the FCC rather than enforceable rules — a self-policing regime where violations surface through journalism and congressional pressure instead of penalties, as the later geo-location episode illustrates.
The trend: Broadband privacy is shifting from FCC-enforced rules to carrier-written voluntary pledges, with public backlash doing the enforcement work regulators no longer do.