Updated December 28, 2023
Like most companies, we collect and process Personal Information of our customers, business partners, and visitors to our websites. We also share it as needed to meet our business goals or fulfill our legal obligations. We protect the Personal Information we have, and we require those we share it with to protect it too.
The purpose of this overview is to describe the Personal Information we have, how we use and share it, the choices you have about our use and sharing, and the steps we take to protect it. This overview summarizes the relevant sections of our full Privacy Notice and gives you direct links to those sections. See answers to frequently asked questions about our practices.
When we provide our services, which include internet access, local and long distance telephone, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), television, additional voice, broadband and data services such as call routing and cloud computing, and alarm monitoring for your home or business, we necessarily obtain certain information about you. This information may include your name, address, email address, telephone, mobile and device numbers, date of birth, social security number, driver's license number, credit information, payment information, and contact information. We may also gather information about how you use our services. And some services, like alarm monitoring, require us to obtain additional information about your home or business, and how you would like to use the service.
Additionally, we gather some information from visitors to our websites and those who click on our internet ads, such as the visitor's operating system, location, Internet Protocol (IP) address, and what sites were visited immediately before or after our site. You can view additional information applicable to visitors to a CenturyLink website.
Recording, reviewing or monitoring of your interactions with CenturyLink. For quality assurance, training and online session analysis we sometimes review your interactions with us. This may include email correspondence, recorded conversations with our agents and recorded online sessions. We also save the text of "click to chat" sessions with our online sales and service consultants and may save screen shots when customers give our repair personnel remote access to their computers for technical support.
By using CenturyLink’s app, you agree to CenturyLink’s use of third-party analytics and monitoring software to record system and user actions within our app. We use this data to detect and resolve issues and to ensure that the app is functioning as designed within the user experience. Aggregated, anonymous statistical information and data that is not identifiable to any person or entity could be used by the third party for auditing, research and analysis purposes to operate and improve the system subject to contractual limits.
Network management. We use information generated on our networks to manage those networks, to plan for future development, and to keep our services running reliably and efficiently. For example, we monitor data to check for viruses, to control spam, to prevent attacks that might disable our services, to ensure that your traffic does not violate your subscriber agreement or our acceptable use policies, and to guard against other inappropriate or illegal activity. This may involve looking at the characteristics of our network traffic, such as traffic volumes, beginning and ending points of transmissions, and the types of applications being used to send traffic across our network. In limited circumstances, we need to look into the content of the data (such as the specific websites being visited, files being transmitted, or application being used) for the purposes described above, in circumstances when we are concerned about fraud or harassment, to repair a problem we detect or that a customer contacts us about, or when we are providing the content of broadband traffic to law enforcement which we only do as authorized by law.
You can see more detail about our information gathering practices.
We may use customer information to provide our services and keep you informed of changes to them, to market our services and sometimes those of others, and to plan improvements to the services we offer and the way we interact with our customers.
You can see more detail about our uses of customer information.
Yes, but we do so responsibly. CenturyLink is made up of a number of companies and we share information among them as permitted by applicable law. We also use other companies to help us market, sell and bill for our services, and we necessarily share information with them and we require these companies to keep your information confidential and secure. We share information with companies that give us credit evaluations (and let them use the information we give them to provide credit evaluation services for others), collect our unpaid bills, or provide other services to us such as advice on products or services our customers may be interested in. We may also allow companies to match information provided to them by their potential customers with name and address information in our databases to confirm the identity of their potential customers, and the length of time they have had service with us. Our contracts with those companies require them to keep the information safe and confidential.
We may share information with other companies if, for example, we anticipate merging, selling or transferring a portion of our business with or to them, or acquiring all or a portion of their business. Usually this information is about the characteristics of our business and groups of customers, but it could include information about specific customers.
Additionally, we give customer information to other carriers and service providers when they need the information to provide their services, bill for them or verify accounts, when they have our customer's consent, or when they have a legal right to the information. And we will also share information with another provider if we suspect fraud, harassment, a threat to their networks, or some other unlawful activity. We may also provide information to government agencies (other than law enforcement) to help with communications assistance programs, or to gain benefits for our company like lower mailing fees and to help ensure that our customers get their bills and other information from us more economically and reliably. And we share information with law enforcement when the law allows us to do so, such as in emergencies or to protect our rights and property, including our network and the networks of others. We also respond to lawful requests for information from both law enforcement and private parties. The law requires us to share names and phone numbers with emergency service providers, whether that information is publicly available in directories or not.
We also must share similar information with directory publishers (who publish white pages, yellow pages and other similar directories) and directory assistance providers (who provide telephone numbers or addresses to those asking for that information). In some cases we limit how this information is used. And in all cases these companies must honor restrictions you have asked for, such as that your information not be published or used for marketing.
If you have elected to have your name, address and telephone number published in white pages directories (which means that it will be public information), that information may be used by others for their own marketing or to create marketing lists. You can opt-out of inclusion on lists that may be used by others for marketing.
You can see more detail about our sharing of customer information.
You have some choices about what customer information we gather and how we use it.
You can see more detail about what choices customers have regarding the gathering and use of their information.
You may access information about yourself in three ways:
You can see more detail about accessing customer information.
How long we keep different types of information is determined by business requirements and applicable state and federal laws and regulations.
We take the security of our customer information seriously. We do several things to protect it:
Like most companies, while we have security measures and policies in place to protect against the unauthorized access, misuse and disclosure of information under our control, we cannot guarantee that your information will never be disclosed in a manner inconsistent with our policies and practices or that our safeguards will prohibit all attempts to defeat these measures. If you think information about you or others has been disclosed without proper authorization, please contact our Privacy Office online, or write to us at:
Privacy Office
CenturyLink Legal
100 CenturyLink Drive
Monroe LA 71203
If you have questions about this notice, our practices, concerns about your personal information, or require assistance in managing your choices, please contact our Privacy Office online, or write to us at:
Privacy Office
CenturyLink Legal
100 CenturyLink Drive
Monroe LA 71203
This Privacy Notice describes the types of Personal Information CenturyLink Residential and Small Business Services collects, processes, maintains, protects, and shares. In the event of any conflicts between this Privacy Notice and a separate agreement between you and CenturyLink, the terms of the separate agreement shall apply to the extent permitted by law.
Residents of states that provide privacy rights can view our state privacy details here.
This Privacy Notice applies to the Personal Information collected when you use or interact with CenturyLink’s products, services, and networks, including our websites. These may include Internet, Phone, Fiber Internet, and other products and services CenturyLink and our affiliates provide.
It also applies to the Personal Information we collect from third parties and potential business customers to market our products and services, to enter service contracts, to complete installations, for support, and for billing for services.
As used in this Privacy Notice, “Personal Information” refers to any information relating to you as a person. It may be information that by itself can identify you, such as your name, or it may be information that identifies you only when combined with other available information, such as your social media username when combined with your email address.
What Personal Information do we Collect?
We may collect the following types of Personal Information from you:
How do we use your Personal Information:
CenturyLink will use your Personal Information to provide services, to set up and maintain accounts, provide, and repair our services and equipment, respond to customers' questions and concerns, bill and collect for our services, plan for future development of our network and services, to market our services, to communicate with our customers and to others about our services. We also use Personal Information we obtain from third parties, including demographic data to help us serve our customers, predict what new services they may want, and determine a customer’s creditworthiness. CenturyLink may also use your Personal Information to assess and implement mergers, acquisitions, reorganizations, bankruptcies, and other business transactions such as financings, and to administer our business, accounting, auditing, compliance, recordkeeping, and legal functions.
Children's use of CenturyLink internet services: We understand that children may use our internet services. When using our internet services, authorized legal guardians have the responsibility to monitor what their children are doing on the internet and what sites they are visiting. For more information about online safety, please visit the Federal Trade Commission resource for internet safety.
When and with whom do we share Personal Information: CenturyLink may share your Personal Information with other entities, including our affiliates, subsidiaries and third parties that provide support, such as service delivery, troubleshooting or marketing for our products and service offerings. We may also share your Personal Information with other entities, including our affiliates and subsidiaries, and credit reporting agencies.
CenturyLink may also share Personal Information with others:
Where do we send your Personal Information?
CenturyLink provides consumer (residential and small business) products and services in the United States. CenturyLink transfers your Personal Information as necessary to conduct business operations, provide services, and engage in marketing activities. In particular, the Personal Information is used to confirm and enable those individuals who have been authorized by our customers to interact with CenturyLink on their behalf and Personal Information contained in our systems, records, activity logs and marketing databases may be accessible by our affiliates and subsidiaries.
To provide and support our services, sometimes we send data to other companies as service providers to transmit, collect, process, or store information for us. We require these service providers to treat the information we share with them as confidential and to use it only for providing their services to us. These include:
How do we protect your Personal Information?
CenturyLink implements a variety of security and operational measures to help prevent your Personal Information from unauthorized access, use or disclosure. We limit our collection and use of your Personal Information to the minimum necessary.
CenturyLink limits the availability of your Personal Information to the purposes specified in this Privacy Notice.
Your choices and control over your Personal Information:
In certain U.S. states, you have the right to ask us to provide you access to, and obtain a copy of, the Personal Information we have about you, to request correction and erasure of your Personal Information, the right to ask us to restrict our use of your Personal Information, to object to our use of your Personal Information, including selling or sharing Personal Information, and, in certain circumstances, the right to direct us to send your Personal Information to another entity, and not to be discriminated against for exercising your rights.
You may designate someone as an authorized agent to submit requests and act on your behalf. To do so, you must provide us with written permission to allow the authorized agent to act on your behalf. We may also ask you directly to verify that you have authorized your authorized agent to act on your behalf.
We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising, and analytics partners. You can exercise your rights to opt-out of sale or processing personal data for targeted advertising, by clicking on the link “Your Opt-Out Rights”. For more details see our cookie notice.
We do not have actual knowledge that we sell or share the Personal Information of individuals under sixteen (16) years of age.
Additional information for Residents of Certan U.S. States:
Your privacy rights may vary depending on where you live. View link here.
Cookies and Web Beacons:
CenturyLink’s use of cookies and web beacons is managed by our Cookie Settings consent tool, which is presented on various CenturyLink websites. Cookie settings are based on your location and specific to the regulatory requirements outlined in various U.S. jurisdictions. CenturyLink also honors browser-based blocking, so if a visitor has a blocker on their browser, the visitor can block all but “strictly necessary” cookies. CenturyLink also honors opt-out preference signals when required.
We also use third party tools, such as Google Analytics, which are operated by third party companies, to evaluate usage of our Site and Services. These third-party analytics companies use cookies, pixels, and other tracking technologies to collect usage data about our Services to provide us with reports and metrics that help us evaluate usage of our Services, improve our Site, and enhance performance and user experiences. To learn more about Google’s privacy practices, please review Google Privacy and Terms on How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services. You can also download the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on Page to prevent your data from being used by Google Analytics. Detailed information regarding CenturyLink’s cookie practices and terminology, can be reviewed in the cookie notice.
How long we keep your information:
We keep your Personal Information for different lengths of time depending on the type of information and business and legal requirements. For example, if you are a customer, we keep information that personally identifies you if you subscribe to one or more of our services. If you no longer subscribe to a service, we still may need that information for business and legal requirements, such as to protect against fraud, calculate taxes, respond to legal requests, or for pending litigation.
Changes to this Privacy Notice:
When we post changes to this Privacy Notice, we will revise the date at the beginning of this Privacy Notice. If we make material changes to this Privacy Notice that change the use of Personal Information that we have previously collected, we will notify you through written, electronic, or other means so that you can make any necessary decisions about your ongoing use of our services.
How can you contact us regarding questions about this Privacy Notice:
CenturyLink and its affiliates are controllers for Personal Information we collect from you as it relates to contacting you about our business products and service offerings that your employer may be interested in. Our principal address for the purposes of this Privacy Notice is:
CenturyLink
Privacy Office
931 14th Street
Denver, CO 80202
You may also send an email to our Privacy Office at Privacy@centurylink.com.
Legal
Questions or comments about CenturyLink Privacy Notice:
Password reset, billing, or service-related issues:
Chief Privacy Officer Associate General Counsel: Hugo Teufel
Mail to:
Privacy Office
CenturyLink Legal
931 14th Street
Denver, CO 80202