Your privacy is important to us

[Brooke_C]

NEW - March 7, 2017

Hi Community,

Here at Public Mobile, we respect your privacy, value your trust, and make it our priority to keep your personal information safe. Our team wanted to let you know that we have updated our Privacy Commitment. Rest assured that we have not changed the five purposes for which we collect and use your information, which remain the foundation of our privacy commitment to you. We have changed the format of our Commitment to allow you to select the amount of detail you wish to review about our privacy practices at any time, simply by clicking. To this end, we have included additional examples to make our commitment more relevant to you. Please visit publicmobile.ca/privacy to read our updates about how we protect your privacy.

Your Public Mobile team

[kav2001c]

@Samianauman not really since privacy is pretty much dead...

[Samianauman]

Privacy matters a lot now days

[community55]

What about our privacy online? The community forum defaults to standard non-secure HTTP so every single time someone logins with their username and password or sends a private message containing personal information, it's not encrypted! 

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca

[swz5005]

bottom line is that we need to use cell phone... and at least they are up front about the change

[ben10nnery]

Same here. That's all I'm curious about. Don't want to read all that legal speak. Haha.

[firstdataplan]

I am glad about my privacy is protected.  Hate to receive all those marketing calls.

[X-Files]

What's changed - that's all I really care about. That's point, no time to read blah blah all small font~LOL

[mikga]

Good to know this from privacy page - text 911 (T911) for deaf and speechless people. Good new service to know for friends & relatives who are in such group. 

[CaNuCk07]

@TheOldVR haha ty!

[TheOldVR]

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@CaNuCk07 wrote:

doesnt matter wanyways, all the providers have the same terms, if you need a cell phone you dont have an option so cant worry about this crap.

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@CaNuCk07 Agreed... and that's why you're a Town Hero!

Case closed.

[CaNuCk07]

doesnt matter wanyways, all the providers have the same terms, if you need a cell phone you dont have an option so cant worry about this crap.

[TheOldVR]

Sorry guys - I'm a little slow this morning....

What's changed - that's all I really care about. As long as there's not some new hidden little gem in the wording I'm all good!

Thinkin it's coffee time....

[David_J]

@stonechucker

Regarding the edit a thread vs. start a new thread, I wanted to post an update to this thread as I felt it was important that there not be multiple privacy threads and keep all responses in one spot, rather than have a search for 'privacy' turn up many possible threads. I understand that earlier comments might lose some of their relevancy, which is a side effect. 

I will note that the new policy does not come into effect until May 1st, and that both the old and new privacy commitments for Public Mobile are both available via our Privacy & Legal page on publicmobile.ca

[stonechucker]

This is an important update, and should not be just an updated previous post (original date 10-03-2015, new info 03-08-2017).

This post should be the start of a new thread.  How can we compare changes from old to new, when the old is simply rewritten over the old?

[will13am]

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@MoreYummy wrote:

@will13am  They need to profile you a few millions times in order to find out how to profile your value information and other stuff too . 😄

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@MoreYummy, this profiling is done by machines and probably kept up to date by the minute.  So, the number of profile runs for me could be way greater than a million.

[MoreYummy]

@will13am  They need to profile you a few millions times in order to find out how to profile your value information and other stuff too . 😄

[will13am]

I just love privacy by policy.  It is barely worth the paper it is printed on.  If customer privacy was truly of concern, then the default is that everyone opts out rather than in.  Since every provider has profiled me a million times over, it is hard to lose sleep over this stuff anymore. 

[Korth]

I'm not attempting to seriously condemn Public Mobile or Telus.

I'm just pointing out that your personal information is a very valuable and monetized commodity.  Yes, the carriers absolutely must comply with laws and regulations.  Yes, they'll happily give you the information they think you should know.  Yes, they will comply if you exercise your rights to exercise more rigid privacy options.

But big business is somewhat reluctant to let people fall outside the neat little check boxes.  Special cases and exceptions and pages of notes attached to each account are costly encumberments.  If you do indeed want your personal privacy to exceed their corporate profitability then, in my experience, you must either follow the corporate script and challenge an entrenched bureaucratic maze from the bottom up ... or you must use non-corporate channels to entirely bypass the maze and attack it from the top down.

[kav2001c]

@Korth curious as to which Telus refused you on?

You can always report Telus for calling you or emailing you as both are against the law at this time if you request them to not market to you

Cell phone numbers are always excluded from being published (it actually costs you extra if you ask to have your number listed for personal or business reasons)

It's a prepay service so you do not need to provide any info at all (I posted a prior thread about a real live person currently on Public Mobile who entered their name & address as Homer Simpson of Evergreen Terrace. Public does not seem to care and still gives service + collects money each month)

You are correct the customer service reps can not make changes like this (as they are nothing to do with your account) but there are certainly ways to have yourself removed (eg national do not call lists)

[Korth]

(bold emphasis is mine)

"We would like to have your consent to continue to collect, use and disclose your personal information for the Identified Purposes.  However, we want you to know that you do have choices and can refuse or withdraw your consent as follows.

You may have your name removed from our telephone, mail or email marketing lists. We use these lists to inform you of relevant products, services and special offers that may be of benefit to you.

Our directory publisher (Yellow Pages Group) makes available lists of published names, addresses and phone numbers to selected organizations for a fee. You may choose to be excluded from these lists (non-published names, addresses and phone numbers are automatically excluded).

You may refuse to provide personal information to us. You may also withdraw your consent at any time, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice. However, in either case, this may limit our ability to serve you.

For further information, please contact us at 1-800-567-0000 or privacy@telus.com. Unless you tell us otherwise, we will assume that we have your consent to continue to collect, use and disclose your personal information for the Identified Purposes."

I've had little luck convincing Telus to comply with this in the past.  My experience was that the front-line Telus support staff have no real authority to make such changes, while the internal Telus support staff who do have enough authority rarely interact directly with customers.  I wanted no listings, no advertising, no mailing lists, no telemarkeing Telus-affiliated "third party agents", no spam.  In the end, I received a letter from Telus advising me in writing that Telus could and would do anything it wanted with my so-called personal information (as explained in the Telus Privacy Code) until I issued a formal complaint to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.