Conflicting published policies

Question

In researching another question, I came across conflicting information in the published policies of a company. Their Policy FAQ article indicates the need for a phone number is strictly for verifying your account and not for any other purposes.

When you sign up for our platform, we do require a phone number. However, we only ask for this information to help us verify your account and ensure our platform remains secure.

We don't use your phone number for any other purposes, and we take your privacy very seriously. Thank you for your understanding!

Lower in the search rankings I found their Privacy Policy which, buried in a wall of text, indicates they will "share" your personal information with marketers. [emphasis added]

Vendors and Service Providers: To assist us in meeting business operations needs and to perform certain services and functions, we may share Personal Information with vendors and service providers, including providers of hosting services, cloud services, and other information technology services providers, event management services, email communication software and email newsletter services, advertising and marketing services, and web analytics services. Pursuant to our instructions, these parties will access, process, or store Personal Information in the course of performing their duties to us.

Could their more concise and plainly worded article claiming to not use your phone number for any purposes beyond account verification be legally enforceable over their disclaimer in their privacy policy allowing them to share personal information (which would normally include phone number) with "advertising and marketing services"?

Answer 1

There's no conflict here.

The company collects your phone number for a specific purpose: to help them verify your account and ensure their platform remains secure.

The second paragraph says that they may share your Personal Information with others and lists some examples. It doesn't say they will do that.

However, if they share your phone number with someone in order to help verify your account, or to make sure their platform is not compromised, that's permitted. It's to be expected that the supplier company will follow instructions and use the data only for that purpose.

The primary purpose of verification and security doesn't appear to allow your phone number to be used for advertising and marketing purposes, so it won't be shared with those service providers. Other personal information might be, though, but because the word may is used, it's quite possible that no data will be shared at all.

Answer 2

Could their more concise and plainly worded article claiming to not use your phone number for any purposes beyond account verification be legally enforceable over their disclaimer in their privacy policy allowing them to share personal information (which would normally include phone number) with "advertising and marketing services"?

Yes, provided that the user himself uses his phone number only for verification of sign up.

The policy you point out would be forfeited as soon as the user uses his phone [number] for purposes other than verification of sign up, such as communicating with the provider or interacting with the provider's social media pages. Those uses of the phone would bring the phone number within scope of contact information that, pursuant to the privacy policy, the provider is authorized to collect and share with third parties.

To revert the aforementioned forfeiture, users may exercise their "right to request deletion" of their telephone number. The provider's timely compliance with that request would preclude unauthorized disclosure of user's phone number.