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ISPs Claim a Privacy Law Would Weaken Online Security, Increase Pop-Ups (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The country's biggest Internet service providers and advertising industry lobby groups are fighting to stop a proposed California law that would protect the privacy of broadband customers. AT&T, Comcast, Charter, Frontier, Sprint, Verizon, and some broadband lobby groups urged California state senators to vote against the proposed law in a letter Tuesday. The bill would require Internet service providers to obtain customers' permission before they use, share, or sell the customers' Web browsing and application usage histories. California lawmakers could vote on the bill Friday of this week, essentially replicating federal rules that were blocked by the Republican-controlled Congress and President Trump before they could be implemented. The text and status of the California bill, AB 375, are available here.
The letter claims that the bill would "lead to recurring pop-ops to consumers that would be desensitizing and give opportunities to hackers" and "prevent Internet providers from using information they have long relied upon to prevent cybersecurity attacks and improve their service." The Electronic Frontier Foundation picked apart these claims in a post yesterday. The proposed law won't prevent ISPs from taking security measures because the bill "explicitly says that Internet providers can use customer's personal information (including things like IP addresses and traffic records) 'to protect the rights or property of the BIAS [Broadband Internet Access Service] provider, or to protect users of the BIAS and other BIAS providers from fraudulent, abusive, or unlawful use of the service,'" EFF Senior Staff Technologist Jeremy Gillula wrote.
The letter claims that the bill would "lead to recurring pop-ops to consumers that would be desensitizing and give opportunities to hackers" and "prevent Internet providers from using information they have long relied upon to prevent cybersecurity attacks and improve their service." The Electronic Frontier Foundation picked apart these claims in a post yesterday. The proposed law won't prevent ISPs from taking security measures because the bill "explicitly says that Internet providers can use customer's personal information (including things like IP addresses and traffic records) 'to protect the rights or property of the BIAS [Broadband Internet Access Service] provider, or to protect users of the BIAS and other BIAS providers from fraudulent, abusive, or unlawful use of the service,'" EFF Senior Staff Technologist Jeremy Gillula wrote.
" Privacy laws directly attack one of our income streams, our ability to collect, store, and sell your personal information"
I had no idea what saint my ISP is. Just think how many ads and how much spam you'd get if they did NOT sell your personal information to advertisers and spammers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Would you actually want their lips on your testicles?
I think I'd rather get it done by ten dollar prostitute with cold sores, she'd be cleaner.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
In Canada, the Canadian Constitution mandates Privacy.
People spend years handling the privacy popups required.
Oh. Wait. They don't. They just say "No" once and then the ads can't steal their info.
Hmmm.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Privacy laws will also cause you to become sterile. You can look it up.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If web browsers removed the code that implements popups, then it would be far less likely that they show up, regardless of what privacy laws are in place.
Modern Web Browsers have Popup blockers that block standard HTML popups, giving indication that a popup was blocked, with options to create an exception. However they still seem to allow popups created by other means (JavaScript, HTML5, etc). The result seems to be annoying popups still show up, but useful popups from a legacy application are blocked.
As a direct result of your efforts, I just clicked over to the EFF site to sign up to do recurring monthly donations to them.
I've had a vague intention to do so for a while, but thanks much for pushing me into action.
The bill would require Internet service providers to obtain customers' permission before they use, share, or sell the customers' Web browsing ....
In addition to REQUIRING customers' permission, I suggest they add the following to the law:
Javascript Popups are not easier to ignore. They are much more invasive when you want to read an article or not have to mute your sound. The websites that do the follow me as a scroll video ads need to die a slow death.