Monday, March 27, 2017

A Senate Vote Is Not the Final Word on Internet Privacy

I'm going to keep this discussion going, even if you don't follow tech news (which, btw, you should) if you want to consider yourself an MIS professional.

To reiterate, in a 50-48 vote mostly along party lines on Thursday, the Senate moved to strip consumer privacy rules that had just been created in October. Next week, the House is expected to go along with the Senate measure, and the rule changes would then head to President Trump for his signature.

The move by the Senate means Verizon, Comcast or AT&T can continue tracking and sharing people’s browsing and app activity without permission (see Thursday's article here), and it alarmed consumer advocates and Democratic lawmakers. They warned that broadband providers have the widest look into Americans’ online habits, and that without the rules, the companies would have more power to collect data on people and sell sensitive information.

But as we learned earlier about end-to-end encryption, there are options, if you are willing to consider them (which you should).    Here is another (and similar) list:
  • A number of browsers, for example, have “stealth” settings that make it difficult to track a web surfer’s activities.
  • Other software can make it difficult to pinpoint where that traffic is coming from. Perhaps the best known is Tor. 
  • Another example among many free software packages designed to prevent eavesdropping and hide a user’s internet address is the Hotspot Shield software offered by AnchorFree, a company based in Mountain View, Calif.
Now is the time to look again at encrypted devices.  Of course, you probably don't care that your phone is not secure from cyberattacks or that your ISP can sell your data without you knowing.   So why worry ... until it happens.

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5 comments:

  1. Jensen YuMarch 28, 2017 at 10:58 AM

    While the points made by the people who want to repeal the previous privacy rule are that ISPs is treated unfairly by FCC comparing to the Internet Service Providers like Facebook and Twitter under the FTC regulation. But I don't think it is a valid reason for ISPs to let free to sell consumers's browsing history to advertisers. This afternoon the House will vote during its session regarding the broadband privacy rule. Let see how the result will be.

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  2. Jensen YuMarch 28, 2017 at 2:33 PM

    House has just approved the vote to repeal FCC privacy rules. With the president's signature, it will soon become a law. Those ISPs companies suddenly receive a huge paycheck from the Congress.

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  3. AddisonMarch 31, 2017 at 3:51 PM

    When I first saw this headline on one of the news websites, I was alarmed but wasn't sure what it entailed-just knew it sounded bad. Now that I have a better idea of what this repeal would do I'm in shock. I thought our primarily 'red' Congress would be all about protecting privacy so I'm confused by the motive of this repeal. Usually I'm one to say that the government can spy on me all they want for I have nothing to hide (naive in some sense) but I don't feel that same way about random big businesses. I feel that the information companies will have unprotected access too is confidential and can be easily misused. Since there is probably no stopping this sort of repeal I just hope that those educated in cybersecurity can provide citizens with some helpful information to protect them from any unnecessary privacy violations.

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  4. Benjamin AmpelApril 2, 2017 at 11:09 PM

    Not only is TOR a great resource, but there are numerous VPNs that cost as little as $3 / month. Now whether or not you can trust the VPNs is another story, but it is a great resource to have in your arsenal, especially as the Trump administration has vowed to go after Net Neutrality next!

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