Xfinity releases contact data for nearly 200,000 by mistake

Nearly 200,000 Xfinity customers nationwide who pay for their phone numbers to remain unlisted or unpublished had their contact information mistakenly posted online last fall, the company confirmed Wednesday.

Comcast, Xfinity’s parent company, could not say how many of those customers are in Colorado, but several have voiced their concern to the state’s attorney general or on official Xfinity forums, lamenting the disclosure and pushing the company to do more to compensate victims of the mistake.

For years, customers have had the ability to pay a small sum per month to ensure that their phone numbers and personal information remain off telephone and online directories.

But in January and February, thousands of people across the country received letters from Xfinity telling them the company had inadvertently published personal information on Comcast’s online directory, Ecolisting.com. The issue affected 2% of Comcast’s 9.9 million voice customers, the company said.

Comcast discovered the issue in November, shutting down the online directory while offering customers a $100 credit. Because the online directory has been shuttered, Comcast will no longer offer nonpublished and nonlisted services.

“We are working with our customers directly to address this issue and help make it right, and are taking steps to prevent this

from happening again,” Leslie Oliver, a Comcast spokeswoman, said in a statement.

In light of the privacy breach, the company offered to change customers’ numbers at no charge, and it set up a phone line (877-2139812) for people to voice concerns or ask questions.

But customers who had their numbers mistakenly released complained on Xfinity’s community message board that although the company corrected its mistake, it’s impossible to put that information back in the box once it’s released.

“I’m now published all over the web because of their error,” one user wrote.

Other customers said the release wasn’t just an inconvenience. Law enforcement officers, judges and domestic abuse victims are some of the people who pay for unlisted or unpublished numbers.

“Xfinity has compromised the safety of myself and my family by publishing my identifying information for others to see,” another user wrote. “Simply providing a $100 credit is not good enough, considering the mess I am going to have to deal with.”

Lawrence Pacheco, spokesman for the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, said in an email that the state’s consumer protection team could not find any complaints about Xfinity releasing unlisted numbers but urged any concerned consumers to submit reports to stopfraudcolorado.gov.

“Complaints about telecommunications providers is one of the top 10 complaints our office received last year,” Pacheco said.

This is not the first instance in which Comcast mistakenly released customer information.

In 2015, the cable operator paid a $33 million settlement after accidentally publishing names, phone numbers and addresses of about 75,000 customers.

California’s attorney general at the time, Kamala Harris, called it a “troubling breach of privacy.”