Will it bother you if your private browsing history is sold to companies by your internet company?
Sounds like an invasion of privacy to me. Isn't that unconstitutional especially since you can't opt out of it?
Politicians who received money from the ISP companies for their vote:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp-web-browsing-privacy-fire-sale
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Just use https: always and your traffic is encrypted. Google defaults to this.
shareThe Truth About Broadband Privacy
Republicans repealed a sweeping new FCC regulation passed as Democrats were on the way out the door late last year. The usual suspects are screaming that you should panic, but the repeal was the right thing to do.
The outrage peddlers are of course peddling outrage:
Hamza Shaban
✔
@hshaban
JUST IN: Senate votes to repeal web privacy rules, allowing broadband providers to sell customer data w/o consent including browsing history
But here’s the truth: the regulation as passed went too far, and was probably illegal to begin with. It was spun that ISPs would “sell information” about you, including your social security number, to advertisers. But that’s never what it was about, at all.
Nobody was looking to sell your SSN or your medical records. Such things are already protected under the law anyway. No, this was about basic, industry-standard advertising practices, and specifically about barring ISPs from getting into that market. This was regulation about picking winners and losers by preventing new entrants into an existing market. As now-Chairman Ajit Pai said at the time:
“If the FCC truly believes that these new rules are necessary to protect consumer privacy, then the government now must move forward to ensure uniform regulation of all companies in the Internet ecosystem at the new baseline the FCC has set,” said FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, who suggested that the Federal Trade Commission could accomplish the task.
But the Obama administration was never going to move against Google in that way. Google’s business model depends on that kind of information trade, and such strong regulations were never going to be levied against them. Therefore this was an unfair regulation, picking winners and losers, passed under false pretenses by the outgoing administration just before the election.
Your privacy was not going to be protected by the regulation. The only thing the regulation would change is who was the one violating your privacy. We shouldn’t be picking winners and losers, so it was good to repeal the regulation.
http://www.redstate.com/neil_stevens/2017/03/24/truth-broadband-privacy/
In my humble opinion, Google -- and others -- should get out of the spying business altogether. If I'm shopping online for a particular kind of dress, that's nobody's business but my own. If I'm looking into a particular kind of healthcare problem, that's also my business. But that's been everyone's business for years now. There are safety measures you can take against the big boys like Google, but it's up to you to protect yourself.
Google, btw, who has been spying on your for years, is a "liberal" company, promoting liberal causes. Just not freedom from being spied on. And that was being protected by the Obama administration.
You don't have to use Google. You can use a different search engine, none or delete your cookies. But, you don't have the same choice with your Internet Service Provider. I want the choice to opt out.
To clarify, the information they're selling is what sites you are going on to learn more about you to shove advertising popups and emails at you. They weren't going to sell Social Security numbers nor medical records.
You can go one step further and ask if your ISP can now track your every movement on the internet, what happens when the government gets a court order for that information? It reminds me of when this government was trying to get library records to find out what books people were reading. It sounds a little too totalitarian for me.
BTW, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai doesn't believe in net neutrality which may mean you could end up paying more money for the internet to have slower service.