New Technology TV

With so many forms of identity theft, fraud, scams and abuses of personal information to protect and defend ourselves against daily, it’s nice to know that Charter Cable not only adds protection to their customers through their online services, but also puts their own privacy policy up on their website to let their customers know what information is collected and why.

Charter Cable uses Digital Globe Services, one of their affiliates to handle any information collection. As the Charter Cable Privacy Policy states, “Digital Globe Services, LLC (DGS) respects and is committed to protecting your privacy”. They go on to state what basic customer information is collected and what it is used for, such as Shipping and Billing addresses, Email addresses, Customer Name and Credit Card numbers.

This information is used to simplify the process of bill pays, initial orders for service, or to send order confirmations and other necessary communications relating to service changes, rebate redemptions and special offers. The privacy policy goes on to state that DGS may share information with 3rd parties to verify the identity of the online shopper, to make sure it’s really you using your credit card, or to process the order with shipping information or the credit card company.

Digital Globe Services makes it clear that they will not “share, rent, lease, or sell your personal information (e.g. your email address, your credit card information, your name, your address, etc.) to any third party for their independent use or benefit.”

Additionally, Charter Cable is up to date on the Phishing scams that are used to gain personal information from unsuspecting internet surfers, and specifically, Charter Cable customers. Charter Cable provides customer support in the form of their News and Alerts page on the Charter Cable homepage. These alerts give examples of appearance of emails sent in phishing scams and information on what to look for, provided as a free service to help the customer protect his or her privacy and the privacy of the family. Their News and Alerts page gives up to nine examples of Phishing emails, with specific information on the phishing scams that have been geared towards Charter Communications.

In general, the emails come with threats to discontinue email accounts that are not “verified” with personal information, such as user names and passwords and addresses. If read carefully, some of the phishing emails have misspellings or spellings that are not typically used in America, like the spelling “centre” for the word “center”, etc. And, while others do look quite professional, with the Charter Cable logo, and technical terms such as System Wide Security Audit or SWSA, used to lure unsuspecting customers into thinking Charter Cable had to initiate such a procedure due to problems in the system, Charter Cable has repeatedly stated that they would not request such personal information be relayed over an unsecured channel, like email.

Charter Cable is concerned for the online security of their customer’s personal information and strives to give the best security they possibly can, while allowing the customer the freedom to surf the web and pay bills and shop without the added burden of worrying about the personal information that is going out the Internet.