Privacy Policy

(Updated June 25, 2022)

This Privacy Policy sets forth the privacy practices and policies for TDS Broadband Service LLC (“TDS”), a subsidiary of Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. It includes an explanation of what personally identifiable information and other information is collected; how the information is used; with whom the information may be shared; options that you have relating to such collection, use, and distribution of the information; and how you can correct any inaccuracies in our records.

You authorize TDS to collect your information when you interact with us. When you apply for, access, purchase, or use our products, services, applications and websites, you agree to our collection, use and sharing of your information as described in this Privacy Policy, which may be amended from time to time. When we update this Privacy Policy, we will post a new version on our homepage. Please read this Privacy Policy and stay informed about TDS’ privacy practices.

Some products and services which are branded TDS or co-branded with a third party may have a stand-alone privacy policy. When a different privacy policy applies, TDS will provide you with an opportunity to review the applicable terms of service and privacy policy. When you purchase or use products or services not provided by TDS, you are subject to the privacy policy provided by an independent third party. TDS is not responsible for the data practices of those independent third parties.

A. What Types of Information Do We Collect? Some of the information we collect identifies you or can potentially identify you (we call this “personally identifiable information”), such as your name, address and telephone numbers; your date of birth; your Social Security Number; credit information and bank account or credit card numbers; e-mail addresses; your payment preferences; subscriber correspondence; or other demographic information, such as size of household. Our records also contain information on billing and payment history, maintenance and repairs, inquiry and technical support interaction, service options you have chosen, and other information related to installation and maintenance of your service. Personally identifiable information does not include aggregated data that does not identify a particular person or persons, or demographic information not connected to an identified individual or household, or non-personal information such as URL information, cookie data, IP address, network connection type, and device identifiers associated with set-top boxes, modems, routers, or other equipment.

In providing our services, we may ask you to provide or confirm your personally identifiable information, which may include but may not be limited to your name, address, telephone numbers, social security number, driver’s license number, birth date, email addresses and other information related to online bill payments. We may ask you to confirm this information from time to time as part of our precautions to identify you, or your authorized representative, when we are contacted about your account in an effort to prevent unauthorized access. We may also collect this information about you from trusted agents who are authorized to sell our products and services, or from employees of our Affiliates. “Affiliates” refers to any of the Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. owned or controlled companies.

In addition, as part of our normal course of business, we generate and maintain account information such as billing, payment, and deposit history; the services to which you have subscribed; customer correspondence and communications records; and maintenance, repairs, and complaint information. We also keep records from research concerning customer satisfaction and viewing or system use habits.

Sometimes, we also obtain additional information from outside sources to supplement the information we collect from you. We might add information about you or your community available from research consultants, marketing firms or other third parties (such as the information that merchants use in delivering catalogues by mail or census information about neighborhoods).

We may also collect the following service-specific customer information depending on the services to which you subscribe:

Telephone Service. As part of delivering Telephone services, we keep information about the quantity, technical configuration, type, destination, location, and amount of your use of Telephone services, calling patterns and information contained on your telephone bill concerning the Telephone services you receive. When that information is accompanied by your name, address, or telephone number, it is known as customer proprietary network information or “CPNI” and subject to special protections as described below. Your name, address, and telephone number alone do not constitute CPNI.

Internet Service. If you subscribe to our Internet service, we transmit, and may collect and store for a period of time, information generated by the service when you send and receive e-mail, video mail, and instant messages; transfer and share files; make files accessible; visit websites; or post blogs, comments, or other information.

TDS also collects and retains information that identifies the devices connected to the Internet through TDS’s Internet service, such as the IP address(es) assigned to the connection. We may collect connection performance information, amount of bandwidth used, and times and dates of connection to help us manage our network and to improve the services we offer. TDS’s monitoring of traffic on its network is exclusively limited to network congestion management purposes for utilization monitoring, hostile port blocking to prevent unwanted file attacks and browser hacking, email virus and spam filtering, and removal of unknown cable modems on our network.

Our services are intended for general audiences. We do not knowingly collect information from children under the age of thirteen (13). If you allow a child to use our services, any information we collect associated with their usage will be treated as your account information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We do not save information on the websites you visit.

Cable Television Service. If you are a Cable Television service subscriber, we may also collect information when you use our systems such as by ordering or viewing on-demand programming or engaging in other interactive programming features. This information is used to carry out the requests you make using your remote control, set-top box, or other equipment, and to analyze viewing habits. We may also collect other information such as the time you actually use our services, the use of other features of our services, and which menus and menu screens are used most often and the time spent using them.

Information collected from the use of these services is maintained on an anonymous or de-identified basis, except in connection with billing for usage of video on demand or pay-per-view services or as necessary to fulfill any other request or order you make via the transactional and interactive services. Some of our advertisements may invite interactive or transactional follow-up from you. If you request products, services, features or information via such interactive advertisements, we collect and use the information generated by the request, including personally identifiable information when necessary, in order to carry out your request.

We may also collect viewing data to determine which programs are most popular, how many people watch a program to its conclusion and whether people are watching commercials, as well as other audience measurement-focused information. All personally identifiable information is removed from this data. TDS, or our contractors or agents, may from time to time share this anonymous information with our advertisers, content providers, or other third parties working on our behalf such as audience measurement or market research firms.

Our audience measurement helps us and the program networks we carry decide on which programs and channels to carry and to improve our Cable Television services. We also use this information to provide you with a more personalized experience by directing advertisers to the channels that produce more sales as they consider, design, and evaluate advertising campaigns.

In addition to this Privacy Policy, we may provide additional notices to you regarding specific advertising or other initiatives. These notices will describe the initiatives in greater detail and may, as appropriate, contain information you can use to choose to participate, or not participate, in these initiatives.

For TDS TV+, if you integrate applications, websites, and services from entities other than TDS (“other-party services”) these may have their own terms and conditions of use and privacy policies, and such terms and conditions and policies shall apply to your use of these other-party services. If you integrate these other-party services to allow functionality such as including other-party services in searches or accessing other-party services via TDS TV+, you will be prompted to allow the other-party services to connect with your TDS TV+ service. If integrated, TDS will collect, process, and share data with the other-party services that you authorized. If you wish to stop the collection or sharing of information with other-party services, you need to disable the integration with such other-party services. TDS does not endorse and is not responsible or liable for the behavior, features, or content of any other-party service or for any transaction you may enter into with the provider of any such other-party service.

For TDS TV+, we collect information on how you use, watch, record, rate and interact with content and, if you use the voice activated remote control, audio data. If you download or use our mobile applications, we may collect, either through your mobile device or the application itself, your mobile device identifier, hardware model, operating system version or mobile network information (as well as any registration data you provide to us). We may also collect geolocation information, which may be used for operational and product- or service-related purposes, such as customizing information based on your location. If you do not want any data shared by our mobile applications, then please delete the mobile applications from your device.

B. How Do We Use Customer Information? We will not disclose your personally identifiable information without your express or implied consent outside of TDS, its Affiliates, service providers, or its authorized agents other than as described in this Privacy Policy. We may use your personally identifiable information to support our provision of your Cable Television, Internet and/or Telephone services for purposes such as sales, installation, operations, billing, collection efforts, administration, marketing, support, network management, maintenance, customer care and communications with you, to enforce our Terms of Service, and for any other purpose otherwise permitted or required by law. Further, when you want to set up an account with TDS, in order to determine your credit worthiness, we may use some of your personally identifiable information to request a credit report from a credit-reporting agency.

More specifically, we may use personally identifiable information to: install, maintain, and upgrade services and the devices and software we use to provide them; to bill properly for services; to send you pertinent information regarding the services; to configure, monitor the performance of, and improve, the services; to detect unauthorized reception of the services; to offer you other services or products that we think may be of interest to you (subject to your right to limit or restrict us from making these offers as described in this Privacy Policy); personalize the content we deliver (for example, TDS TV+ uses information on how you use, watch, record, rate, and interact with content to make programming recommendations); conduct industry or consumer surveys; and for tax and accounting purposes.

Aggregate Information: We occasionally aggregate information about our customers and create data sets that do not identify individual customers. This information is not considered personally identifiable information. We use and share this aggregate information at our discretion, along with other internal data, for programming, advertising and similar purposes.

C. When Do We Disclose Customer Information to Third Parties? TDS considers the personally identifiable information that we keep to be confidential. Unless prior written or electronic consent is obtained, we will disclose to third parties personal information that we maintain related to our subscribers only when it is necessary to render services to you, or to carry out related activities in the ordinary course of business for our ordinary business purposes, at a frequency that varies in accordance with the particular business need. We may provide, where permitted by applicable law, aggregated information that does not identify individuals to third parties.

We sometimes work with Affiliates, service providers, vendors, partners or other companies to help us in providing and/or developing our services and to market new services to you and may share some of your personally identifiable information with such parties for these purposes. We require all parties to assure at least the level of confidentiality we maintain. We also prohibit them from using your information for any purpose other than that for which they have been engaged. If you would prefer to limit the use of your personally identifiable information for marketing purposes, please contact us by calling the customer service number listed on your bill.

We may provide your name and address to marketing organizations, programmers and other businesses. Section 631 of the federal Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984, as amended, (the “Cable Act”) allows us to disclose this “mailing list” information unless you tell us otherwise. We may also use or disclose customer information, including personally identifiable information, without your consent, to protect the safety and security of our customers, employees, or property (including in emergency situations), to protect or defend the legal rights or property of TDS or its Affiliates or their employees, agents and contractors (including enforcement of our rights under our Terms of Service and policies), to protect against fraud or for risk management purposes, if your account is referred to a collection agency or attorney, in court or elsewhere, to comply with the law or legal process, such as a subpoena, and as otherwise permitted by law.

The types of persons or businesses to whom information about you may be disclosed without your prior written or electronic consent include: Installation, repair, and subscriber assistance subcontractors; entities providing services to us that we resell or license to you; billing and collection services; program guide distributors; software vendors; firms conducting market research on our behalf; and Affiliates.

TDS may also disclose information about you to representatives of government, tax, or other regulatory authorities in the furtherance of our legitimate business activities. For all of the same purposes for which we use personally identifiable information as described above, we may sometimes disclose such information to our Affiliates, agents, contractors, outside auditors, professional advisors, service providers and vendors, or in connection with a potential business merger or acquisition, or to sale partners, and to regulators. If a new company were to take ownership of our cable system, we reserve the right to disclose and transfer all customer information, including personally identifiable information, to the successor company.

We describe above when we disclose to third parties anonymous customer information relating to our Cable Television services and disclosures associated with other-party services.

Special Exceptions. We reserve the right to disclose your information if we have a good faith belief it is necessary to:

• Comply with the law.
• Protect our rights or property or those of others.
• Respond to fraud, abuse or other unauthorized activity.
• Enforce our policies, including those contained in our Terms of Service, Internet Network Management Policy, and Acceptable Use Policy.
• Transfer your information as a part of a sale or transfer of business operations to another company.

D. Special Telephone Service Information. We may disclose customer information, including personally identifiable information, in connection with our Telephone service, for purposes such as providing directory service, Caller ID, and 911/E911. In using our Telephone services, your name and telephone number may be transmitted and displayed on a Caller ID device unless you have elected to block such information (Caller ID blocking may not prevent the display of your name and telephone number if you dial certain business numbers, 911 or toll-free 800, 888, 877, or 866 numbers.)

In providing Telephone services we also receive usage information, including information about calls made and received and their duration. We treat this information as confidential, and its use and disclosure is governed by the CPNI rules described in this Privacy Policy. We keep records of usage information for as long as it is necessary for business purposes. This period of time may last as long as you are a subscriber and, if necessary, for additional time so that we can comply with tax, accounting and other legal requirements. When information is no longer needed for these purposes, it is our policy to destroy or anonymize it.

Customer Directory Listing Preferences. Our Telephone service customers can designate their listings as published, non-published or non-listed for published directories or for directory assistance services. To carry out your decision to have a published number, we share information with directory listing vendors. TDS cannot remove customer information from, or correct errors in customer names, addresses, or telephone numbers appearing in, or omitted from, directory lists until the next available publication of those directory lists. Further, we may have no control over information appearing in the directory lists or directory assistance services of directory publishers or directory assistance providers which are not owned by us. Because of the complexity of this process and the involvement of others, errors sometimes occur. If you elected to have your information published in directories, that information becomes public and may be used by others for their own marketing or to create marketing lists.

Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI). Federal law regulates CPNI. CPNI includes information that relates to the quantity, technical configuration, type, destination, location, and amount of use of a telecommunications service that we receive solely as a result of our provision of Telephone service to you. In particular, this includes information contained in our invoices pertaining to Telephone service (other than your name, address and phone number) and the details of who you call and who calls you. For your protection, we will not disclose your call detail records over the phone to an inbound caller, and we require the use of a password to log into any accounts where you can view your call detail information online. We use and disclose CPNI only in very limited circumstances as described above. We only will use, disclose, or permit access to CPNI in compliance with applicable law and as explained in this policy.

E. When is Disclosure of Customer Information Required by Law? We may disclose your personally identifiable information in certain situations to government agencies or other entities. We may receive legal requests for our subscribers’ personally identifiable information from government agencies and law enforcement, as well as from other entities as part of civil matters (for example, when we are served with a valid subpoena). We cooperate with these requests by providing the information required by law. TDS does not volunteer customer information or give access to customer communications to law enforcement or others, except to the extent we are required to do so in the “Special Exceptions” section above or detailed below. Depending on the violation of law alleged and the legal process undertaken, you may not always be entitled to receive notice that your personally identifiable information has been disclosed to the government or civil litigants. In particular, some law enforcement requests specifically prohibit TDS from disclosing the request or notifying you that we have received it. Due to this fact and the volume of requests we receive, we do not assume any duty to notify you of receipt of any legal requests for your personally identifiable information.

For Cable Television Service Subscribers. We must disclose customer information, including personally identifiable information, when required by the terms of a valid legal process such as a subpoena, court order, or search warrant. If a court order requires us to disclose personally identifiable information to a third party, we are required to notify you. If you subscribe to our Cable Television service, under federal law, you must be afforded the opportunity to appear and contest the order in court. In addition, in accordance with the United States of America Patriot Act of 2001, we may be required to disclose personally identifiable information to law enforcement officials in accordance with both court orders and subpoenas; however, we may not disclose records revealing your selection of video programming. You may not be entitled by law to prior notice or the opportunity to contest these disclosures.

For TDS Internet or TDS Telephone Service Subscribers. If you subscribe to our Internet or Telephone services, the same requirements do not apply. Instead, in some instances we may disclose personally identifiable information and CPNI about you to representatives of government or to comply with a court order without your consent and without advance or any notice to you, except that in these cases our disclosure is not to include records revealing your selection of video programming.

In other instances, we may be required to provide information in order to comply with applicable laws. For example, we are required to notify the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children of information about child pornography that we become aware of in the course of providing our services. This information may be provided without a court order, and we do not have to give you notice and the opportunity to contest such disclosure.

If we notify you of specific legal requests or orders for personally identifiable information, and there is an opportunity for you to object to such disclosures, it is then up to you to object or take specific action to prevent these disclosures.

F. Can I Prohibit TDS’s Use and Disclosure of My Customer Information? You have some choices in how we use or disclose personally identifiable information. If you do not want us to disclose your name and address to third parties for mailing lists in connection with the promotion of TDS’ products and services and for other legitimate business activities related to our services, as explained in this Privacy Policy, you may contact us as follows:

Any mailing list disclosures that we may make are limited by law to disclosures of subscriber names and addresses where the disclosures do not reveal, directly or indirectly, (i) the extent of any use by the subscriber of our services; or (ii) the nature of any transaction made by the subscriber over our services.

TDS may use email and/or in-browser messages to send transactional or relationship messages related to your service, including information on changes in terms or features, updates and upgrades, new features to which you are entitled, and information on system outages. Unless you opt out, we may send you emails or other electronic messages marketing our services to the extent permitted by applicable law.

You may contact TDS at any time at the contact numbers set forth in this Privacy Policy to ask us to put your name on our “do not call” list so that you do not receive marketing or promotional telephone calls from us or made at our request.

If you are a customer of our services, from time to time we may offer you other communications services (for example, Internet or Cable Television services if you are a Telephone customer) that are tailored to your specific needs, or which would be available to you on special promotional terms. If you do not want us to use, disclose or permit access to your telephone or internet account to market services to you, please contact us to prevent such use, disclosure and access.

Nevada Privacy Rights: In 2019 Nevada lawmakers passed a law to allow Nevada consumers to limit the sale of their “Covered Information”. Covered Information is information like your first and last name; home or other physical address which includes the name of a street and the name of a city or town; electronic mail address; and telephone number. If you are a Nevada consumer and wish to contact TDS regarding this Nevada law, please write to us via email to privacy@tdstelecom.com.

G What Can I Do If I Think My Privacy Rights Have Been Violated? If you believe your rights have been compromised by TDS, in violation of the Cable Act, please notify TDS immediately so that we can resolve your question or concern. Additional actions may be taken by you, including a civil lawsuit seeking damages, attorney fees, and litigation costs, should you decide to enforce the limitations imposed on us by the Cable Act as applicable with respect to the personally identifiable information we collect. Other rights may be available to you under federal or other applicable laws.

H. How do we Protect Customer Information? TDS takes reasonable security safeguards to protect against such risks as loss, unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure of information. TDS uses a variety of commercially reasonable and appropriate safeguards to protect information residing on its systems including, without limitation, server firewalls and physical facility security. We restrict access to information to those who need to know that information in order to provide, operate, develop or improve our services. We also have appropriate practices and procedures designed to protect your information. We train our employees on the proper handling and securing of information which includes reporting potential privacy concerns.

We cannot prevent every unauthorized attempt to access information. If you suspect an issue with access to your information, please contact us by calling 1-888-225-5837.

I. How Long Do We Keep Customer Information? We will maintain personally identifiable information about you only as long as it is necessary for our business purposes. This period includes the time during which you are a subscriber to our services, plus a period of time after you cease to be an active subscriber, in order for us to comply with business, legal, tax and accounting regulations and requirements.

J. May I Inspect Customer Information? You have the right to inspect our records containing customer information about you, and to correct any errors in such information. In most cases, the personally identifiable information contained in these records consists solely of billing and account information. If you wish to inspect our records at our local business office, please notify us in writing 30 days in advance and an appointment will be arranged promptly during our regular business hours.

K. Additional Information

Questions and comments about this Privacy Policy or for any additional information that may not be covered within this Privacy Policy, please contact TDS at:

TDS Telecom
Attn: Legal Dept.
525 Junction Road
Madison, WI 53717

Customer Verification Policies. If you call to discuss your TDS account, you will be asked to provide several personally identifiable pieces of information which may consist of but may not be limited to the following: a TDS account number, street address, telephone number, date of birth, social security number, driver’s license number, account password or PIN number.

Telemarketing Calls. To help reduce unwanted telemarketing calls not affiliated with TDS, the FCC offers telephone subscribers the opportunity to register their residential telephone numbers in its national Do Not Call registry. You may register for the list without charge by calling the FCC at 1-888-382-1222 or TYY 1-866-290-4236 from the telephone number you are registering or online at www.donotcall.gov.

Website Monitoring. TDS’ websites use the browser feature called “cookies” and other tools to help monitor user activity on our websites. “Cookies” are generally short strings of unique random text or numbers that your browser records on your computer and that our website, and potentially other websites, can later access. This “cookie” does not identify the visitor to our website personally, but only the computer that the visitor uses to access the TDS site. We may analyze the data we receive from our website “cookies” to make our site more responsive to the needs of visitors. You may program your browser not to accept “cookies”, but this may interfere with your enjoyment of personalized site features. The TDS web servers also automatically collect limited information about your computer’s connection to the Internet, including your IP address (but not about you, personally) when you visit the TDS website. TDS uses your IP address information to deliver TDS web pages to you, that you request, that tailor the content of our site to the interests of users, and to measure traffic within the site. We may ask third parties to place advertisements about our products and services on sites that are not operated by TDS. These third parties may use technologies such as “cookies”, web beacons, and similar technologies to collect, store and read information on your computer or mobile browser when you visit one of their websites. TDS may track user clickstream information when you view our advertising on these websites. When you visit a TDS website, we record your interaction (e.g., movement of cursor) to help us gauge the effectiveness of our websites, improve our online operations, and enhance your online experience to better meet your needs as our customer.

Internet Access Security. We encourage you to secure the device through which you access the Internet, as well as the devices which provide connectivity, particularly wireless (Wi-Fi) routers. Doing so can help keep the information you transmit through your broadband connection from being monitored while in transit on the Internet or on your network. Security measures may include password-protected wireless devices, installation of firewalls, antivirus protection with regular updates, regularly checking for and applying security patches for software and operating systems. Despite our best efforts, TDS cannot guarantee the security of our network, nor can we guarantee that information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to TDS over the Internet.