[gerner]

True, but it seems like this is not much a disincentive compared to the revenue potential in that data. Having worked at a number of companies that have acquired data (legally) from a fraction of this many people, one should easily be able to turn those around for a comparable amount of money. I'm not saying there's $100M of revenue here (for 2 million folks). But It seems like the penalty must be much worse than the upside to make the risk adjusted expected value work out in favor of following laws and regulations.

I might agree with you if I thought the bad press Verizon is getting was actually quite costly. But I don't.

[eli]

FWIW, I'm pretty sure Verizon lost quite a bit of money on this. Especially since most people don't bother to opt-out even when given proper notice so the illegal act netted them far less than 2 million people.