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Rights Groups Push For Strong Broadband Privacy Rules (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A coalition of rights groups has sent a letter to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission asking for tougher privacy regulations on providers of broadband internet services. The letter was sent by the ACLU, the EFF, Public Citizen, and over 50 other groups. "Critics say broadband providers are already harvesting huge amounts of consumer data for use in targeted advertising, the groups wrote. 'This can create a chilling effect on speech and increase the potential for discriminatory practices derived from data use,' the letter said." FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has said such firms need to ensure their data is protected, and that consumers should know more about what data is being collected, but he hasn't addressed whether the data should be harvested in the first place. He expects the FCC to review these practices "in the next several months."
Better to push for better privacy equipment to protect us from the toothless "rules"
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
HTTPS is the only real answer. Rules like what are being proposed are hard to enforce. But properly implemented authentication and encryption will make such rules unnecessary.
We're going to make information free Mr. Anderson, whether you like it, or not.
No? Take a long walk off a short peer.
'Privacy Rules' are used by certain businesses and industries as a way to avoid reporting details.
They sound good, but are always leveraged for predatory business practices.
For example, there are now privacy rules about buying a used car at a dealership. The dealership is not allowed to give any info about the prior owner, or what the owner did with the car (maintenance, repairs, recalls, etc.).
But the dealership can advertise the car as 'Certified Used' and claim to offer the service records and repair history as supporting information.
When you get the car you will find that you can't get any of the past records. If you are lucky, some scumbag sales-leech will tell you all the recalls were performed and smile.
Google sock puppets are standing by in case this discussion gets too real.
Gotta run, gotta delete my browser history.
And my credit card history, and my grocery store rewards card history, and my email history, my facebook/IM/twitter/myspace/bandcamp history, and shield my house from the satellites.
The worst part is we PAY our ISPs and they still sell our data. If they are subsidizing our service they should say so and offer an unsubsidized service. Might be unaffordable but at least we'd all know where we stand. But my guess is that the service charge is profitable and selling user data is good old fashioned greed.
They want terrorism because it increases corporate welfare to the military industrial complex.
Plus it helps corporations make profits from terrorists. Blackberry claims they can't read their own email to protect criminals. That's why you see so many of those Republicans politicians using a Blackberry.
Terrorism is very profitable for the pukianz.
Ive opted out of every option on Verizon's Customer Privacy Settings page. Yet I still get this nice readout every month that shows what I used my data on.
"Please note: Data Utilization categories are an estimated representation of how data has been used. Data Utilization does not reflect actual amounts of data used and does not match billed usage for data roaming, delayed usage and similar billing charges. Data Utilization does not identify specific websites, applications or URLs.
Categories
Video 67 %
Web & Apps 15 %
Communication & Device Services 12 %
Social Media & Networking 3 %
Downloads & Marketplaces 2 %
Audio 1 %"
I still find that rather creepy.
Although I'm glad that they now have a opt out for the unique tracking code they were injecting into my traffic. (X-UIDH)
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
I'm a Verizon cell customer. They added an opt-out "feature" where they'd track all web traffic, so I opted out. Six months later, I found through a news story that they'd silently added another opt-out tracking feature which didn't obey the earlier misfeature's disable flag. So now I pay Verizon for my phone data, and pay a VPN service for the right to browse the Internet without my own damn ISP spying on me.
No, I can't easily switch providers - my family's phones aren't all AT&T-compatible, and T-Mobile doesn't have good coverage in some of the places we visit often. But more to the point, I shouldn't have to.
I offer another proposal to Chairman Wheeler: allow the carriers to choose between common carrier status (with all its legal protections) and, what, data portal status maybe (with zero liability protections for transmitted content). If Verizon, Comcast, et al want to snoop traffic, then they should be legally on the hook for the content of that traffic. If they don't want to be liable for every possible copyright violation or prohibited content flowing through their network, then they damn well better choose to be dumb pipes.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Lol, I dont have any Credit Cards.
My Rewards cards from the grocery store are all filled out with "William Jefferson Clinton, 1600 Pennsylvanian Ave. Washing DC"
My E-mail History is all Encrypted.
I dont have Facebook, twitter, myspace, etc. They are a waist of time and bandwidth.
Oh, and I shielded my house from EMI, RFI, ELF, and EMP so that is covered.
Did I miss anything?
Here's the letter that was sent.
A different FA has some comments and/or speculation on how some ISPs are (ab)using customer info.
Adblock Plus FTW....
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
How cute that you think your email history is encrypted! Adorable, really. I'll bet you don't even have a proper HOSTS file -apk
HTTPS is the only real answer.
I doubt that very much
And note the irony in the last question in the link
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
HTTPS is the only real answer. Rules like what are being proposed are hard to enforce. But properly implemented authentication and encryption will make such rules unnecessary.
Nope.
HTTPS is necessary, but woefully insufficient for protecting your privacy. Even with everything encrypted, your ISP still knows what sites you connect to - they do route the packets, after all.
Would it be OK if which ads are displayed on your TV to be affected by which sites you visit? And "you", of course, includes anyone in your household and your WiFi guests. Which snail mail adverts are sent to your billing address or service address? Or, in general, whether or not your name appears on various targeted advertising lists? Or lists that aren't at all about advertising...
A VPN will prevent your ISP from doing this, but then gives your VPN host the same capabilities.
On a similar note, we've had a bunch of articles here about how it's almost impossible to prevent web browser fingerprinting from allowing you to tracked from one web site to another. But, your ISP is in a special position to know all that you visit and who/where "you" are.
And all this assumes that the spying agencies aren't in bed with the ISPs, etc.
Are they saying its OK for the government to collect data on you if you use dialup? How come privacy does not extend to those users?
See, that's how much the media have been bombarding me with their veiled pro-copyright propaganda. When reading "rights groups" I have to immediately think about groups allied with entities like RIAA, MPAA, etc. That's why it looked so weird... rights groups being pro-consumer? Getting past the headline clarified things, but still. That "rights groups" in my mind automatically means "pro-copyright" is terrifying.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Do you ever listen to the radio?
Encrypt Absolutely Everything
Provided that you also encrypt DNS and the IP address is not associated with only one domain name, if you use HTTPS then the only thing the ISP will know is what IP you connected to and anything traffic analysis would reveal. TLS (transport layer security) protects all of HTTP.