California Consumer Groups Seek Stricter Wireless CPNI Privacy Rules

California consumer groups urged stricter privacy rules for smartphones. In a Tuesday joint petition, The Utility Reform Network (TURN) and Consumer Federation of California urged the California Public Utilities Commission to update privacy rules for wireless carriers’ use of consumer proprietary network information (CPNI). The CPUC should expand protected personal information to include precise geolocation, information of children younger than 13, content and data consumption and web-browsing and application-use histories, the consumer groups said. The California regulator should require telecom providers to get opt-in approval -- and not as a condition of service, they said. Providers should include privacy disclosures as the first section of its customer agreement and include a summary of customers’ opt-in and opt-out privacy choices at the beginning of its privacy policy, they said. And CPUC should require providers to conspicuously “include on its home webpage” links to the privacy policy and CPUC’s customer bill of rights (General Order 168). “Phone companies aren’t leaking your data, they’re eagerly selling it, regardless of whether you’ve agreed,” said TURN Executive Director Mark Toney. “Even customers who are able to navigate the privacy settings on their phones may not realize their CPNI needs to be protected separately, and their location data separately from both of those. Requiring consent before a customers’ personal information can be sold is much more consistent with California’s constitutional commitment to privacy, and would be more effective in disclosing the sale of data by phone companies that now routinely track customers every seven seconds.” CTIA didn’t comment.