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Ask Slashdot: ISPs That Respect Your Online Privacy?
New submitter Rick Schumann writes: According to this story just posted here on Slashdot, Comcast is playing about as dirty as they can get. This is just about the last straw for me; are there any ISPs in the United States that actually respect your online privacy?
They are awesome
www.sonic.net
They respect privacy, and only the minimum required by law , then delete it
they're also loud proponents of Net Neutrality.
For example, I have two options, TW/Spectrum with up to of 300/10mbit, or AT&T with up to of 3/?mbit. Sadly no other smaller ISP offers anything reasonably above 10mbit down.
Just get a VPN.
Statement from XMission, a local ISP based in Salt Lake City
https://xmission.com/privacy-pledge
Yes, +1 for sonic.net.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Sending a cease and desist letter to a site is as dirty as they can get?
When someone says, "Any fool can see
I am in one of the rare US municipalities with a non-profit ISP. It's part of the town power and light company, and they also provide cable and phone service. Prices are fair, service is great and the vast majority of the employees are people who live here. We've had our speeds upped a few times at no additional cost, and we even got a refund on our power bill when the power company ran a surplus.
When asked about them selling information, the answer was a loud and clear "NO, we never sell information about our customers".
The downsides of this setup are that the support hours are not 24/7, and some services/equipment can lag. But given that I've not experienced significant downtime in 10+ years, I can deal with it.
I was actually pleasantly surprised. This article made me contact Frontier to see if my ISP was doing anything lame. Turns out they do not throttle anything, but they do prioritize for VOIP and VIDEO because they have higher packet loss possibilities. They also do not monitor or sale any user information. So I guess frontier is pretty good. I pay $64.99 for a 100/100 fiber connection.
The question should be, "Which is the best VPN service to use?"
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
Checked them. It's 'available' at my address, but apparently they piggyback off of AT&T. How does THAT work? How do I know that AT&T wouldn't be invading my privacy?
I'm not sure if your question is serious or not. And no, Comcast, nor anyone else that I know of, has been blocking sites.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Besides pricing I've never had anything to complain about.
Any ISP on the list here http://www.ispprivacypledge.net/
What I shop for, where I shop, what I buy, where I buy it, what I look at for entertainment, what times of the day I use the internet, what times of day I pay my utility bills, who I send and receive email from, etc etc etc are none of anybodys' gods-be-damned business, that's why. The real question here is: why do you NOT care? Do you like having complete strangers make all sorts of assumptions about you and your life? How would you like it if you were denied employment you're fully qualified for, because they bought collected information about you from ISPs and other websites (because nobody told them they weren't allowed to do that), and they made assumptions about you based on that? What if you were arrested for something you had nothing to do with based on your web browsing habits? What if your health insurance rates go up because they discovered that you occasionally use the internet to order a pizza? I could go on and on. Chances are you'll just scoff at all this as nonsense, but the FACT of the matter is that in a world where you can't even take a shit without some complete stranger knowing about it, you end up not in control of your own life anymore -- even worse than it already is. At the very least the rampant collection of your very personal internet usage fills your email with even more SPAM; do you not care about that, either?
At least give a damn about this because OTHER PEOPLE give a damn about it. Why should your lack of caring about it mean that everyone else has to put up with shitty companies snooping into our lives constantly? How is THAT right?
Does it really matter? If you're lucky you have a choice between 2 actual high speed providers, one cable provider and one fiber provider. But most people have to choose from one cable provider, much slower DSL, or wireless.
If you choose DSL or wireless the speeds are very limiting on what you can do.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
Easy
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
You think ISP's, with their bulldog blackboxes and echelon marching orders can afford to respect your privacy? The time's long gone when that was even remotely possible. Get a VPN, some of those can still offer it.
I didn't say I didn't care.... I only said that I recognize that any appearance of online privacy one might find only exists because one might not be noteworthy enough to pay attention to in the first place.
Obviously it is ideal if people do not pay attention to matters that are none of their business, but I can't help what other people do, I can only control my own thoughts and actions and trying to dictate those of others just so that I might be able to feel more secure around them is just so much wasted energy.... effort is better spent on making sure that when you are doing something you want kept private, you have instituted protections of either your own design or choosing that will obscure your activities enough that those who might have otherwise intended to pry will not be aware enough of what you are doing to bother even trying to pay attention.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If you want to beat the Net Neutrality drum, please post stories that are actually about Net Neutrality.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Also, here's a nice piece on them from Ars. A little old but relevant.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
>"According to this story just posted here on Slashdot, Comcast is playing about as dirty as they can get."
Really? Looks to me like they are just sending a cease and desist letter to a site using their name in the domain. We might not like that, but this is not an abuse of power or their position as an ISP at all. They didn't block the site. They didn't flood the site. They didn't slow down the site.
No ISP (that I know of) is going to support net neutrality on their own volition. They want the power to do whatever they want with data and bandwidth. I don't blame them for wanting to get rid of neutrality, even though I don't like it. I blame the apathetic CUSTOMERS who either don't understand the issues or just don't CARE about their privacy and freedom.
As of many years ago Earthlink was pretty good about privacy.
About two dozen small ISPs (including sonic.net) have signed the ISP Privacy Pledge
Does one of them serve your area? Perhaps you should consider giving them your business.
Reply to This
I can't help what other people do, I can only control my own thoughts and actions and trying to dictate those of others just so that I might be able to feel more secure around them is just so much wasted energy.
I'm going to be blunt with you, for your own good: That is a cowards' attitude. It is within the power of EVERY CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES to stand up for what's right and speak out against what's wrong, and DEMAND that your will, the WILL OF THE PEOPLE, be done. That's how this country is supposed to work, friend. If you sit back and let them do whatever they want, THEY WILL DO WHATEVER THEY WANT. So show some backbone.
As I don't really have anything to sell, I would think that the statement that you won't buy from me is kind of a tautology.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That is, you see, my entire point. Your so-called privacy is an illusion that is only afforded by whatever level of disinterest that others might have in seeing what you are doing.
What makes any one person's values who is demanding respect for their privacy from others under threat of legal consequences any better than a dictator who is also demanding what others do, also on pain of prosecution... bearing in mind that again, this privacy is entirely illusory to begin with?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Assume no ISP respects your privacy, and act accordingly.
Maybe and ISP simply does not respect your privacy, but at least have the decency to tell you to your face, maybe the ISP "Says" it respects your privacy, but behind your back is monetizing your info, maybe they respect your privacy "Today", but are under intense financial/govermental pressure to not respect it in the future.
So, Once you decide that NO ISP is respecting your privacy (instead of asking on May 23, 2017 which ones do and which ones do not), you can act accordingly, and it does not matter anymore.
Use services that allow you to aggregate various ISPs (using MLPP) to both get a faster internet AND get the ISP of your scent, then use proxies and/or VPNs to cover your tracks, couple that with anonymizing browsers for an added level of protection. Put all the Browser crap in a RAMDISK for even more protection.
As a reader of Slashdot, you probably have the technical acumen to do it.
Yes is a hassle, but your privacy is worth it.
Or, do as I do:
I do not assume that my ISP does not care for my privacy...
I DO KNOW FOR A FACT that my ISP (in Venezuela) does not respect anyone's privacy (and the other ISPs do not do either, I worked at 2, and worked on an Telco Equipment seller to said ISPs, and have friends working on all the other ISPs, is a small country, and a small comunity of Telecom profesionals), but since I do not care that they can see my activities online (which are pretty harmless), I do not care and carry on with my life...
But, the important point is: Assume that every single ISP does not care about your privacy, and decide from there...
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
I have DSL through a local ISP; a bridged connection that doesn't use the phone company as anything but a simple carrier.
And cable from one of the big cable guys.
That way, I can have unrestricted Internet at slow speed, and a filtered, rewritten subset of Internet at high speed. But it's good enough for Netflix without chill.
How about Janus-faced, or perfidious?
I come here for the love
Sonic resells AT&T U-verse through a wholesale partnership with AT&T. Their contract disallows monitoring and usage caps. If you're worried Sonic provides OpenVPN access where your IP will be on Sonic's allocated subnets.
Click! is a municipal ISP, but sells their service through Advanced Stream and Rainier Connect.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/...
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
Bottom line, if privacy is what you want, use whatever ISP gives you the best service(?), and put everything through the best VPN service you can find.
Begs the question: Is there a VPN service that absolutely protects privacy?
Forced copyright trolls into court, very much against their will (;-))
davecb@spamcop.net
Someone is always owning the last mile. But often they need to rent it to the competition (hopefully at a fair price).