• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

The Verge: Congress just cleared the way for ISPs to sell your browser history

Status
Not open for further replies.

Kthulhu

Member
Internet providers now just need a signature from President Trump before they're free to take, share, and even sell your web browsing history without your permission.

The House of Representatives passed a resolution today overturning an Obama-era FCC rule that required internet providers to get customers' permission before sharing their browsing history with other companies. The rules also required internet providers to protect that data from hackers and inform customers of any breaches.

The resolution was first passed by the Senate last week and now heads to the president, who's expected to sign it. At that point, there'll only be a vague baseline of privacy rules governing internet providers and some promises from them not to misbehave.

In case you're wondering, yes, this vote did go down party lines. Only 15 Republican Senators voted against this with the Democrats.

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/28/15080436/us-house-votes-to-let-isps-share-web-browsing-history

The EFF also has more info if you want to know how this will affect you: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/congress-sides-cable-and-telephone-industry

Please lock if old.
 

emag

Member
Well, this is not good. What if you always search incognito mode?

Incognito just deletes history (cookies, etc.) from your end. All the addresses you visit are still entirely visible to your ISP and, hence, to anyone willing to buy data from your ISP.

You could use a VPN to get around your ISP, but then you're giving all your data to the VPN provider (and there are a bunch of technical drawbacks as well). TOR is another option, but has its own faults.
 

Mumei

Member
Well, this is not good. What if you always search incognito mode?

Well:

You’ve gone incognito

Pages you view in incognito tabs won’t stick around in your browser’s history, cookie store, or search history after you’ve closed all of your incognito tabs. Any files you download or bookmarks you create will be kept.

However, you aren’t invisible. Going incognito doesn’t hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the websites you visit.

That's Chrome. Or Firefox:

Private Browsing doesn’t make you anonymous on the Internet. Your employer or Internet service provider can still know what page you visit.

I'm sure any browser says something like that when you go into private browsing.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
So wait, is this literally just web pages accessed? What level of actual internet data does this open up? What songs are sent to me via Pandora? How many hours I spend on Overwatch? Which Steam games I download?
 
Of course this happens with a republican controlled senate, house and white house.

Can we get a list of people that voted and signed for this shit?

Huge breach of privacy and although some good could have possibly came out of this, nothing of that sort ever happens in the real world.
 

br3wnor

Member
Will this be sold as "web history of br3wnor" or just "web history of IP address" so they can target ads to my IP?

Shit sucks but I'm less upset if it doesn't identify me as an individual as opposed to an IP address.
 

Foffy

Banned
Neoliberalism at its finest.

This will be commodified and likely weaponized.

Imagine people of notoriety basically being blackmailed with this if it can be trailed to the person. Normalize and take down dissenters because they look up YouPorn or know what a hentai is.

Fuck off.
 
Oh god. I remember watching a video about how a data center sent a spam mail letter to some guy and where his name would be, it said DEAD DAUGHTER CAR CRASH. The computer fucked up, but it shows how far data compiling goes for these companies.

My mom is going to get a letter one day saying

BREATH OF THE WILD ALEXIS TEXAS
Address
City, State, zip
 

Kthulhu

Member
Neoliberalism at its finest.

This will be commodified and likely weaponized.

Imagine people of notoriety basically being blackmailed with this if it can be trailed to the person. Normalize and take down dissenters because they look up YouPorn or know what a hentai is.

Fuck off.

Not a single democrat in the house or senate voted for this bill.
 

i-Lo

Member
Opens a whole host issues when these information falls into the hands of unsavory people/companies. But hey, making a choice means living with the consequence.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom