Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast promise they won't sell your browsing history

A little over a week ago, the US Senate voted to eliminate the privacy rules that would ban internet service providers (ISPs) from sharing or selling your web browsing data to advertisers without your consent. It was joined by the House of Representatives a few days later, which also voted in favor of eliminating current privacy rules.

Thankfully, it looks like not all companies agree with the decision. Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon have all recently announced that they will not sell their customers’ web browsing data to other companies.

Gerard Lewis, Comcast’s chief privacy officer, said that the company did not sell its customers’ individual web browsing history before the FCC’s rules were adopted, and has no plans on doing it now. He also added that Comcast is revising its privacy policy in order to make it clear to everyone that it does not sell individual web browsing data to third parties.

Verizon also said that it doesn’t and has no intention of selling personal web browsing histories. However, it did mention that it has two programs that use — but do not sell — browsing data, which customers can join if they want to. These include the Verizon Selects advertising program, which makes marketing to customers more personalized and useful and another program that provides aggregate insights advertisers and other businesses might be interested in.

AT&T more or less said the same thing as Comcast and Verizon. The company released a statement in hopes of assuring its customers that it will not sell their personal information to anyone, under any circumstances.

It is great to hear that these three companies still value their customers’ privacy and have no intention of making any additional money by selling individual web browsing data to advertisers. We hope that more companies will make similar announcements in the near future.