Tuesday, October 23, 2007

AT&T Lets You Talk, But Limits What You Say

att_ds.jpgAT&T has revised their Terms of Service in a manner that should horrify the consumer public. Usually such updates screw the customer subtly, but AT&T's new adjustment ironically pulls freedom of speech directly from those using AT&T's service to speak. In short, if you slam AT&T, they can pull your service:

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...(c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.
Of course, AT&T has overlooked one important fact about their TOS: they can't cancel a customer's service who will no longer do business with them anyway. Changes in TOS are often a loophole out of your contract. And if I were an AT&T customer, my choice would be pretty clear. UPDATE: Confirmed with AT&T— this is a new TOS merged in from the Yahoo! DSL TOS. Naughty, but AT&T also confirms that this is the way its always been

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