Altria
Consumer Staples
47
out of 100. Number 240 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where Altria does well
- Renewals 0 of 20. Nothing found.
- Altria makes explicit no-sale commitments: 'We do not sell your personal information for monetary consideration' and it does not share data for targeted/cross-context behavioral advertising.
- It runs dedicated privacy request portals (privacy.altria.com) plus a phone line (1-800-787-6700) for access, correction, and deletion requests, promises non-discrimination for exercising rights, and details an appeal process for rejected requests.
- The privacy statement promises a prominent website notice for significant privacy changes and consent where applicable law requires it before changes apply.
- The forced-arbitration clause, while maximal, is disclosed in an all-caps header banner at the top of the terms — not buried at the bottom.
You cannot sue Altria in court or join a class action over these websites — all disputes go to private binding arbitration in Virginia, one person at a time, with no opt-out offered.
The fine print
6 clauses and findings from the draft archive, dated 1 October 2026. The plain English comes first; the small print is the company's own words. None of these has been checked yet.
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You cannot sue Altria in court or join a class action over these websites — all disputes go to private binding arbitration in Virginia, one person at a time, with no opt-out offered.
Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms of Use, your use of this Altria Company Website shall be resolved exclusively through final and binding arbitration, rather than in court... You agree that you may bring claims only in an individual capacity and not as a class member in any purported class action or representative proceeding.
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Altria can rewrite the terms whenever it wants, with no notice promised to you; just visiting the site after a change counts as you agreeing to it.
We reserve the right, at our complete discretion, to change these Terms of Use, in whole or in part, at any time, by posting revised terms on the Altria Company Websites. It is your responsibility to check periodically for any changes we may make to these Terms of Use. Your continued use of the Altria Company Website following the posting of changes to these Terms of Use signifies that you accept the changes.
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Anything you submit to Altria's sites (and your name attached to it) becomes theirs to reuse, sell, or license forever — you can't take it back.
If you do submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you grant us and our affiliates an unrestricted, nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, copy, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute and display such content throughout the world in any media... You grant us and our affiliates the right to use the name you submit in connection with such content, if we so choose.
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Your right to bring any claim expires after one year — far shorter than the multi-year statutes of limitation most states give you.
YOU AGREE THAT ANY CAUSE OF ACTION ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE ALTRIA COMPANY WEBSITES MUST COMMENCE WITHIN ONE (1) YEAR AFTER THE CAUSE OF ACTION ACCRUES OR THE CAUSE OF ACTION IS PERMANENTLY BARRED.
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If your use of the site creates legal trouble, you pay Altria's legal bills — and Altria can seize control of the defense while you still foot the costs and are forced to cooperate.
You agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless Altria Group, Inc., its affiliates, and their officers, directors, employees, contractors, agents, licensors and suppliers from and against any and all losses, liabilities, expenses, damages and costs, including reasonable attorneys' fees and court costs, arising or resulting from your use of the Altria Company Websites and any violation of these Terms of Use. We reserve the right, at our own expense, to assume exclusive defense and control of any matter otherwise subject to indemnification by you and, in such case, you agree to cooperate with us in the defense of such matter.
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Your identifiers, call audio, and browsing activity are shared across the Altria family and with analytics providers, and turning on Do Not Track in your browser is ignored.
We disclose Identifiers, Sensory Information, and Internet and Network Activity Data to our affiliates or companies in which we have an economic interest... We disclose Identifiers and Internet and Network Activity Data to data analytics providers... Some browsers incorporate a 'Do Not Track' (DNT) feature... we do not currently respond to DNT signals.
How these were found
Sources read directly via browser fetch of the official altria.com pages on Oct 1, 2026: 'Terms of Use' (http://www.altria.com/terms-of-use, applies jointly to altria.com, philipmorrisusa.com, ussmokeless.com, johnmiddletonco.com, njoy-llc.com) and 'Privacy - Altria' (http://www.altria.com/privacy, Privacy Statement with California Notice at Collection). Neither page carried a visible 'Last Updated' date in the fetched text; the privacy statement was indexed ~17 days prior. No verbatim mirrors were needed — the official site fetched fine. Altria is a tobacco company; its consumer-facing brand sites (e.g., Marlboro) are age-gated separately, so scoring is limited to the corporate legal surface reviewed here. Altria sells nothing online and runs no consumer subscriptions, so auto-renewal categories are effectively not applicable (scored 0).
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.