I got the following text message yesterday:

Hi, it’s Verizon Prepaid. We’re updating our Unlocking Policy effective 07/07/2025. 60 days of paid active service and ordinary usage will be required in order to qualify phones to be unlocked. You can review our updated Unlocking Policy at https://www.verizon.com/support/device-unlocking-policy/

It’s nice that they gave me a few days’ notice, I guess, and it’s also nice that the Unlocking Policy starts with a bald-faced lie in its very first sentence:

In order to mitigate theft and other fraudulent activity, newly purchased devices are “locked” to work exclusively on the Verizon network.

They’re actually locked to the Verizon network so Verizon can get more of the buyer’s money every month. That’s pretty standard in the mobile phone industry these days – it’s why “unlocked” phones cost more – and it’s in Verizon’s interest to make unlocking a subsidized phone enough of a pain in the ass that most customers won’t bother.

And now that the Assclown administration has announced a desire to roll back some federal pro-customer policies, Verizon sees an opportunity to make phone unlocking even more of a pain in the ass.

Techdirt’s Karl Bode has pointed out that the rules being rolling back – which do reportedly bind Verizon tighter than other companies – were a pendulum swing in response to Verizon’s old, bad history on the subjects of not just unlocking phones and using unlocked phones on their network but basics like third-party apps. So I guess it’s also nice that they didn’t go that far immediately…

This is something else I’m going to have to keep an eye on, I guess. I’ve been a Verizon customer for a lot longer than 60 days, so it shouldn’t affect me, but If the service I’m paying for stops working on Saturday, I’ll know why. (Sure, they say the new policy only affects subsidized phones they sell, but see above re: their history and unlocked devices on their network…)

And I’ll be uninstalling the mostly useless My Verizon app, just in case some corpo decides to use its ungodly number of permissions offensively.