Question 1

The information we collect

Accepted Answer

To better run our business, we collect information about you, your equipment, and how you use our products and services. This includes:

Account information. Information you give us about yourself, such as contact and billing information, service-related history and details, including Customer Proprietary Network Information.
Equipment information. Information about equipment on our network like the type of device you use, device ID, and phone number.
Network performance. We monitor and test the health and performance of our network. This includes your use of Products and Services to show how our network and your device are working.
Location information. Location data is automatically generated when devices, products and services interact with cell towers and Wi-Fi routers. Location data can also be generated by Bluetooth services, network devices and other technology, including GPS satellites.
Web browsing and app information. We automatically collect a variety of information, which may include time spent on websites or apps, website and IP addresses and advertising IDs, links and ads seen, videos watched, search terms entered, and items placed in online AT&T shopping carts. We may use pixels, cookies, and similar tools to collect this information. We don’t decrypt information from secure websites or apps – such as passwords or banking information.
Biometric information. Fingerprints, voice prints, and face scans are examples of biological characteristics that may be used to identify individuals. Learn more in our Biometric Information Privacy Notice.
Third-party information. We get information from outside sources like credit reports, marketing mailing lists, and commercially available demographic and geographic data. Social media posts also may be collected, if you reach out to us directly on social media or mention AT&T. Sometimes this data is de-identified, aggregated, or anonymized.

All these types of information are considered personal information when they can reasonably be linked to you as an identifiable person or your household. For instance, information is personal when it can be linked to your name, account number, or device.

Question 2

How we use your information

Accepted Answer

We rely on the information we collect to support our business functions, power our services, and improve your experience, such as when we:

Provide our products and services.
Contact you.
Improve your experience and safety. This includes verifying your identity, detecting and preventing fraud, protecting your financial accounts, authorizing transactions and assisting your interactions with us.
Improve and protect our network.
Use it to help understand which additional products and services may interest you and others, including combining it with the information from testing and running our network. (We don’t access or use the content of your texts, emails or calls for this or any other marketing and advertising, but we may use your communications directly to us for these purposes.)
Design and deliver advertising, marketing and promotional campaigns to you and others – and measuring their effectiveness (See your choices).
Use it for billing, collection, and protection of our property and legal rights.
Prevent and investigate security issues, illegal activities and violations of our terms and conditions.
De-identify, aggregate, or anonymize it to protect your privacy and security. We don’t try to re-identify this data or associate it with an individual person except to evaluate the effectiveness of our de-identification policies and procedures.
Conduct research and create aggregated reports – reports that offer insights about groups of customers, but not individuals (we do not attempt to re-identify individuals in aggregated reports).

Question 3

How we share your information

Accepted Answer

As described in the following paragraphs, AT&T shares information among the AT&T family of companies. We also share with non-AT&T companies.

AT&T affiliates. We share information that identifies you personally with our affiliates, such as Gigapower, Cricket, and Quantum Fiber. When we share this information, they must follow this Privacy Notice regarding your information, not just their own notice. This includes the privacy choices you make with AT&T.

AT&T affiliates and non-AT&T companies for advertising and marketing. We may share information with affiliates and other companies to deliver our ads and marketing or to assess their effectiveness. In some instances, we may share your information with non-AT&T companies that combine your information with theirs to better identify audiences and deliver ads on behalf of advertisers, including AT&T, (Learn more about our ad programs and see your choices.)

Non-AT&T companies providing a service. We use suppliers for services like marketing, billing, and to support our products. When we share your information with suppliers, we require them to use it only for the intended purpose and to protect it consistent with this notice.

Non-AT&T companies for identity verification. We share your information with companies such as your bank to protect you from fraud, authenticate your identity, protect your financial accounts and authorize transactions. When we share for this purpose, we require them to use it only for the intended purpose and to protect it, consistent with this notice. (Learn more and see your choices, including your right to decline this service.)

Non-AT&T companies and non-branded affiliates with your consent. If we have your opt-in consent, we may share your information, consistent with your direction.

Non-AT&T companies or entities where authorized or required by law. This can happen when we:

Comply with court orders, subpoenas, and lawful discovery requests, and as otherwise authorized or required by law. Like all companies, we must comply with legal requirements. You can learn more in our Transparency Report.
Detect and prevent fraud.
Provide or obtain information related to payment for your service.
Route your calls or other communications, like connecting calls or text messages with other carrier networks.
Facilitate network operations and security, defend against legal claims and enforce our legal rights.
Provide information (including location) to an appropriate governmental entity in emergency circumstances such as immediate danger of death or serious physical injury.
Alert the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to information concerning child pornography if we become aware through the provision of our services.
Share the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of non-mobile phone customers with phone directory publishers and directory assistance services as required by law. We honor your request for non-published or non-listed numbers.
Provide name and phone number for wireline and wireless Caller ID and related services like Call Trace.

Non-AT&T companies for metrics, insights and research. We may share aggregated (grouped) data that does not identify you personally for these purposes. We require that companies and entities agree not to attempt to identify individuals – or allow others to do so. We share in this manner for:

Metrics: Sometimes you enjoy a service from us that directly involves another business. For instance, we might provide the Wi-Fi service at a place you visit. As part of our service, we may provide aggregate metrics reports to that business about how the Wi-Fi is being used, such as aggregated location and web-browsing data. It can only be used for group insights.
Insights: We may share aggregated data about our network, operations or services.
Research: We require researchers to handle the data securely and not use it for other purposes or further share it.

Non-AT&T companies for location services. With your consent, we may share your location information for traffic and mapping apps and other location services to which you subscribe. We share only with your consent, unless required by law. Keep in mind:

You may give your consent to us, or you may give it directly to another company – like a medical alerting device company.
If you give it directly to another company, that company governs the use or disclosure of location.
In some cases, such as parental controls, consent may come from the AT&T account holder and not the individual user.

Question 4

Your privacy choices and controls

Accepted Answer

You can manage how we use and share your information for certain activities including advertising and marketing. Here are key examples:

Sharing or selling my personal information. We may share limited information to create, deliver, and measure advertisements for things you might like. This includes targeted advertising, which may be based on personal information obtained from your interactions with other businesses. We also share information in ways that may be considered a sale of information under some state laws, such as exchanging subscriber lists for marketing or sharing identifiers and other information with non-AT&T advertising companies to target and deliver ads on behalf of advertisers, including AT&T. We do not sell your Sensitive Personal Information.

You can ask us to stop at any time, just:

Visit att.com/PrivacyChoices or our Choices and Controls page to control if we can share or sell your personal information.
Contact us at (866) 385-3193 if you are a California resident.

We recognize and honor the preference signal associated with a Global Privacy Control.

Access, delete and correct your personal information. You can ask to see what personal information we have about you. You can also ask us to delete or correct it. And if we deny your request, you have the option to appeal our decision.

Access and Portability. If you want to see the personal information we’ve collected, you can ask us for it. We will describe the categories of information we collect, the specific pieces we’ve collected, the sources of the information, the purposes for collecting, sharing or selling it and the categories of non-AT&T companies with which we shared or sold it. You can also ask to “port” your data, which means you get a copy that you can take with you.
Delete. You can ask us to delete your personal information. In keeping with various state laws, please know that we will still keep data needed for things like running the business, security and fraud protection, compliance with legal obligations, and marketing our products and services to our own customers.
Correct. You can ask us to correct inaccurate personal information we have about you. We’ll ask you to provide documentation to support the correction and let you know the result.

To access, delete, or correct your information, visit our Choices and Controls page. California residents can also contact us at (866) 385-3193. Helpful details about the process can be found at our Data Request Center, including your option to appeal. We don’t mind if you make access, deletion, or correction requests, or ask us not to sell or share your information. These are rights under certain state laws, and we have extended their availability across the U.S., regardless of where you live.

Depending on your state of residence, you may have additional privacy choices. Just visit our State Law Approach page and scroll to your state to learn more.

As required by California law, you can review information specifically about California requests from the previous calendar year on our California metrics page. We also follow state requirements within California regarding businesses and those that provide work for us.

Personalized and Personalized Plus

AT&T has two programs that use your personal information to help customize your experience. For instance, you might be shown an online advertisement that is more relevant to your interests, rather than a general ad.

You can choose to participate or not – and it’s never a problem if you change your mind. You are automatically enrolled in the Personalized program, but you can always opt out. You must opt in to join Personalized Plus. Choices for both programs can be made at att.com/PrivacyChoices.

Here is a comparison of the programs:

Data Use or Sharing Description	Personalized	Personalized Plus
Uses data about your use of our products and services, including data from apps.	✔	✔
Uses demographic data like age range and ethnicity* that we purchase from third parties.	✔	✔
Uses data from our advertising partners.	✔	✔
Uses automated decision-making, such as artificial intelligence.	✔	✔
Does not use information about your medical conditions or financial account information.	✔	✔
Does not access or use the contents of your texts, emails or calls.	✔	✔
May use precise location and Customer Proprietary Network Information for marketing and advertising.		✔
May use web browsing we collect as your internet provider for marketing and advertising and infer websites you visit over a secured connection.		✔

*If you live in certain states, we won’t collect, use, store or share your sensitive personal information for marketing and advertising unless you join Personalized Plus. This includes information like ethnicity and racial origin. The states are Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia.

If you join the Personalized Plus program, it is an extension of the Personalized program, so you will be enrolled in both. But you can always stop the sharing or selling of your personal information at att.com/PrivacyChoices or our Choices and Controls page.

More choices and controls

Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI). CPNI is information related to the telecommunications services you purchase from us, such as which subscription plan you have and details about who you called. Your phone number, name and address are not CPNI. It is your right and our duty under federal law to protect the confidentiality of your CPNI.

You can choose whether we use your CPNI internally for marketing – such as helping to offer you new services and promotions.

You can opt out at att.com/cpni/optout. You can also call us any time at (800) 315-8303 and follow the prompts. Or you can talk to a service representative at (800) 288-2020 (consumer) or (800) 321-2000 (business).

We don’t share CPNI outside of our AT&T affiliates, agents, and suppliers without your consent, except for court orders, fraud detection, providing service, network operations, and security; aggregate (grouped) information that doesn’t identify you personally and as otherwise authorized by law.

If you choose to restrict our use of CPNI, it won’t affect your services. We keep your choice until you change your mind, which you can do at any time. Keep in mind, if you restrict use of your CPNI, you may still get marketing from us.

Identity verification. Non-AT&T companies like your bank may receive limited information from us to help protect your accounts from fraud, verify your identity and make sure it’s really you authorizing a transaction. We do not allow these non-AT&T companies to use your information for any other purpose. You are generally enrolled through the non-AT&T company, but you can stop at any time through us. Text “STOP” to 8010 to turn off Identity Verification, or text “RESUME” to restart. Or manage your choices at att.com/PrivacyChoices.

Contact preferences. We like to tell you about offers and programs that may interest you. You can manage how we do that. Keep in mind that we still may need to contact you with service and non-marketing messages. Please visit Contact Preferences for more information and links.

Industry choices and controls

Online behavioral advertising. You have industry-wide choices about online, interest-based advertising.

Companies including AT&T may use cookies, mobile advertising identifiers, and other technologies to collect information about your use of websites including ours. This information can be used to analyze and track online activity or deliver ads and content tailored to your interests.

You can opt out of online behavioral advertising from companies that participate in the Digital Advertising Alliance. Go to their Consumer Choice Page. You can also select this icon when you see it on an online ad.

You can limit collection of data on websites by managing cookies and other similar online tracking technologies on your computer. Remember that if you change computers, devices, or web browsers, or if you delete cookies and other similar online tracking technologies, you will need to manage them again.

At AT&T, please note that when we collect web browsing information as an internet service provider, it works independently of your web browser’s cookie and private browsing settings that interact with online behavioral advertising. You can manage AT&T’s use of web browsing information – such as our Personalized Plus program – at att.com/PrivacyChoices.

We don’t currently respond to Do Not Track. Please go to All About Do Not Track for more information.

Question 5

Data retention and security

Accepted Answer

We keep your information as long as we need it for business, tax, or legal purposes. We set our retention periods based on things like what type of personal information it is, how long it’s needed to operate the business or provide our products and services, and whether it’s subject to contractual or legal obligations. These obligations might be ongoing litigation, mandatory data retention laws or government orders to preserve data for an investigation. After that, we destroy it by making it unreadable or indecipherable.

We work hard to safeguard your information using technology controls and organizational controls. We protect our computer storage and network equipment. We require employees to authenticate themselves to access sensitive data. We limit access to personal information to the people who need access for their jobs. And we require callers and online users to authenticate themselves before we provide account information.

No security measures are perfect. We can’t guarantee that your information will never be disclosed in a manner inconsistent with this notice. If a breach occurs, we’ll notify you as required by law.

Aviso de privacidad de AT&T

Personalizado y Personalizado Plus

Más opciones y controles

Opciones y controles de la industria

Otra información de privacidad

Centro de privacidad de AT&T