seems sneaky, but once i did some research (and maybe you can dig up more than i was able to Smartmom!) it seems that the information stays w/in the company but can be given to their products promotion people etc.
this happened to me with a new credit card i signed up for if you remember me griping about being called and charged for something but never actually saying i wanted it and thinking the whole time it was the c.c. company but it was in fact their outsourced marketing people. when i called later to give them a "what-for" they said that they would take me off "Their List" and that i would basically be put on their DO NOT CALL list for marketing stuff. (comment#6)
It's a pain to have to do that but seems like it's becoming the norm.
Separate but relatedly, from what i understand if you are on the Do Not Call list (at least the govn't one) and someone calls you for you to buy something (and you are not currently a customer of theirs) then it is against the law.
Verizon Wireless Comment on CPNI
Posted by Jim Gerace in PolicyBlog on October 15, 2007, 05:33 PM EST

Let's be clear: Verizon Wireless does not sell personal customer information to third-party advertisers. Period.

The notice that was sent (and the cause of some buzz) simply alerts our customers that Verizon Wireless may share customer information with the Verizon group of companies.

In other words, we are keeping all the data in question in the family – unless you tell us not to.

Our customers are asking us for bundles that provide home and wireless services, and the sharing of information -- like where our wired network customers overlap with wireless -- allows us to provide these bundles.

We believe that it will benefit our customers to be able to share information with Verizon affiliates, so that they can receive information about all products and services that Verizon has to offer, including bundled offerings of Verizon Telecom and Verizon Wireless. Customers who don't want that information can tell us so, by "opting out”.

If a Verizon Wireless customer doesn't want his/her information shared in this way, Verizon Wireless will honor the customer's request. Verizon Wireless has a long-standing policy of guarding personal customer information.

The Opt-Out notices we're providing to our customers are so they can opt-out of our sharing their basic information with other Verizon companies, and that's it. We're only asking customers whether they want to opt out now, because we wanted to make sure our back-office systems - I.T., customer service, etc. - were all ready to go to handle customer questions.

There's a right way to send Opt-Out notices; the FCC rules themselves prescribe specifically that opt-out is the way to share information with telecommunications affiliates, to market telecom services. FCC rules also provide certain required language, which we followed.

FCC is also clear about this: you use "Opt-Out" with customers if you're looking to share across affiliates/parent companies, etc. - so customers would be getting information from within the same family of products/services. "Opt-In" is required if a company were addressing the issue of sharing customer information beyond - for example to non-telecom services. We aren't doing that.

For additional information on Verizon Wireless and customer privacy, go to: www.verizonwireless.com/privacy

For information about telecommunications consumer privacy issues, go to: www.fcc.gov

~karma: i'm countin on it~