Juno

[defeKt0r]

I was listening to this week's TWiT just a scant hour ago and heard about a new addition to the Terms Of Service AT&T forces you to agree to in order to use their "high-speed" DSL service.  Needless to say, I was floored by this blatant disregard for anonymity and the freedom of speech.  You can read the /. blurb on it HERE.

But to save you the clicking, reading, and searching I'll go ahead and show you what you previous AT&T users are now agreeing to without your knowledge.

AT&T's new Terms of Service give AT&T the right to suspend your account and all service "for conduct that AT&T believes"..."(c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries." After cooperating with the government's violations of privacy and liberties, I guess AT&T wants their fair share. AT&T users may want to think twice about commenting if they value their internet service."

The full section of the TOS:

      5.1 Suspension/Termination. Your Service may be suspended or terminated if your payment is past due and such condition continues un-remedied for thirty (30) days. In addition, AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) violates the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws) or a violation of these TOS, or any applicable policies or guidelines, or (c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries. Termination or suspension by AT&T of Service also constitutes termination or suspension (as applicable) of your license to use any Software. AT&T may also terminate or suspend your Service if you provide false or inaccurate information that is required for the provision of Service or is necessary to allow AT&T to bill you for Service.

      5.2 Deletion of data after Termination or Cancellation. You agree that if your Service is terminated for any reason, AT&T has the right to immediately delete all data, files, and other information stored in or for your account, including email messages, without further notice to you.

Note section 5.2, after your service has been terminated, they purge your data totally.  I have seen this sort of behavior running rampant on the AT&T forums while I was researching their entirely too complicated wireless data plans.  Moderators and Administrators reserved the right to delete any post/account they felt was damaging to AT&T or exposed some shortcut around some 'feature' you were force-fed when you were buying your plan.  Given, that is entirely in the domain of Admins/Mods, but what I saw was more akin to a witch-hunt than cleanup work.

And just to clear up any confusion, Bell South was re-acquired by AT&T in 2006.  See this (large) image for other fun facts about the telecommunications industry: LINK

[Silverain]

Telephone corp = evil.  Unfortunately they enjoy a monopoly on a service that everyone in the civilized universe needs, so not a lot one can do about it.

[heyIMmike]

Telephone corp = evil.  Unfortunately they enjoy a monopoly on a service that everyone in the civilized universe needs, so not a lot one can do about it.

Actually, there are options to those willing to take them.  Juno and I do not have a home phone, which is something that my parents were never able to understand, but we gave the boot to the land line.  We get our internet and local TV via the cable company, for a competitive price compared to DSL from Bell South.

Its just how flexible you want to be.

[lady calie]

i'm starting to think i should read the ToS before i get a contract for something x.x'
I'm forced to use AT&T internet during the summer because of financial issues with my mom and never knew about this stuff >.>;;
my dad also uses them for our cell phone usage x.x

[Sleeper]

well, this makes me feel much better about an internet that browser's never works, constantly forces me to reset the wireless deal, already made me reinstall the softwarre twice, and, though forced to use internet explorer, wants to mess up my yahoo email account.

seriously, i never thought i would have to know such atrocities like the "spontaneous browser disappearance" until my family signed up with them. and you'd think if they have the time keeping clean reps they could do something useful about making internet usage easy.

it's also kind of weird that a monopoly that got split up a while back merged back together.