EFF – Repealing Broadband Privacy Rules, Congress Sides with the Cable and Telephone Industry
“Putting the interests of Internet providers over Internet users, Congress today voted to erase landmark broadband privacy protections. If the bill is signed into law, companies like Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, and Verizon will have free rein to hijack your searches, sell your data, and hammer you with unwanted advertisements. Worst yet, consumers will now have to pay a privacy tax by relying on VPNs to safeguard their information. That is a poor substitute for legal protections.”
Related – Five Creepy Things Your ISP Could Do if Congress Repeals the FCC’s Privacy Protections
TC – Everything you need to know about Congress’ decision to expose your data to internet providers
“But in the meantime, yes, they can get away with quite a bit:
– ISPs can record and sell your browsing history, data on which apps and services you use and so on.
– ISPs don’t have to tell you what they collect or who they sell it to beyond what they volunteer to say in their privacy policy.
– ISPs may or may not be required to notify you in case of a breach (this differs state by state).
– ISPs can still force you to resolve complaints or violations in their internal system via forced arbitration.
– ISPs could give subscribers a discount for agreeing to share personal information — but why bother when they get it for free?
It’s also a great time to experiment with invasive practices like ad injection and supercookies, and questionable ones like zero rating. Why not, right?”
iVerge – The 265 members of Congress who sold you out to ISPs, and how much it cost to buy them (They betrayed you for chump change)
“The only people who seem to want this are the people who are going to make lots of money from it. (Hint: they work for companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.) Incidentally, these people and their companies routinely give lots of money to members of Congress.
So here is a list of the lawmakers who voted to betray you, and how much money they received from the telecom industry in their most recent election cycle.”
What can you do?
Use a VPN. (You ought to be using this on public/unsecured wifi anyway.)
“A virtual private network (VPN) is a virtualized extension of a private network across a public network, such as the Internet. It enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. Applications running across the VPN may therefore benefit from the functionality, security, and management of the private network.” Wikipedia
Basically a VPN is a private tunnel for your communications.
I use Torguard on my computers and Android phones. I’m going into my third year of using it and it has been hassle free.
Right now Torguard is on sale for 1/2 off (I don’t know how long the sale will last).
The cost will be $30 a year or $5 per month. You will be able to use this on up to 5 devices at once. Heck of a deal if you ask me.
You MUST use this coupon code in the second screen during checkout: TGLifetime50
***EDIT***
I am going to waive the No Politics rule for this post. Keep it civil y’all.
All other rules apply.
Scott says
Eric I know the policy regarding politics here, but as I long time Tweakhound visitor I only feel it is justified to repeat that it is Republicans doing this (your link on the “265 members of Congress” goes into further detail.
To any other Tweakhound readers; If you value your internet privacy, make sure you are informed before you vote!
It matters!!!!
Eric (a.k.a. TweakHound) says
I am going to waive the No Politics rule for this post. Keep it civil y’all.
All other rules apply.
Joshua says
Just one side of the aisle doing above board what the other side does under the table. You can play politics with this if you want, but if our recent election cycle hasn’t opened your eyes nothing will. Legislate all the law you want, just don’t get amnesia when it comes to enforcement.
Scott says
Yes, the ol’ “both sides do it argument”. What you are saying is the equivalent of “There are some Democrats who take money from the NRA, so both parties are equal regarding gun control.”
We both know that is not the case.
Like gun control, religion, taxes, abortion, etc., we know where both parties fall on these issues. Internet privacy and Net Neutrality are among them.
Gene Carignan says
Installed Torguard per your advice. Worked one time then cannot get past firewall. Disabled win7 firewall. Same results. I really look forward to many hours of debug. No (apparent) help on Torguard site.
Eric (a.k.a. TweakHound) says
Send me a screenshot of any error. Will look at it tomorrow. It’s beer o’clock. Tweakblog at Tweakhound dot com
Gene Carignan says
Seems will not connect at boot time. Takes several tries to go. I have screen shot of initial log in. Not intuitively obvious how to enclose attachments.
Eric (a.k.a. TweakHound) says
https://torguard.net/forums/index.php?/topic/700-how-to-autostart-tg-client-at-boot/
http://meridian.ws/wordpress/?p=306
https://torguard.net/forums/index.php?/topic/1000-autostart-on-boot-doesnt-appear-to-work-on-most-recent-win-10-client/
email: Tweakblog at Tweakhound dot com
Bilbo47 says
First install didn’t work on my Vista. Something with MS VC 2015 runtime. Still trying. Other installs were sweet.