Probes are never pleasant

Courtesy of Verizon, $1 million be distributed to wrongfully terminated customers who held internet usage plans, according to NY attorney general Andrew Cuomo.

Verizon also committed to paying $150,000 in penalties and costs to the state of New York. A major part of the settlement includes revising the marketing for its wireless internet access plans, reports ZDNet.

Results of a state probe conducted by Cuomo's team found Verizon advertised its NationalAccess and BroadbandAccess plans as "unlimited" when they were not.

Cuomo stated, "When consumers are promised an 'unlimited' service, they do not expect the promise to be broken by hidden limitations."

In specific, downloading movies and playing online games were prohibited in both access plans.

And from 2004 to April '07, 13,000 users that exceeded an undisclosed amount of bandwidth were also sliced from their plans.

Comcast recently took a public beating for its attempts to control bandwidth by slowing access to P2P sites.

Verizon agreed to reimburse customers for the cost of phones or access cards whose accounts were terminated in this manner.

Attorney general Cuomo is currently also investigating child safety on Facebook.