Believe Your Secure Internet Browser Protects You?
Congress voted yesterday to kill privacy rules that prevents internet service providers (ISPs) from selling users’ web browsing histories and app usage histories to advertisers. Protections that were proposed by the Federal Communications Commission that would force ISPs to obtain consent before selling customer data are now at risk.
Web browsing patterns can show considerable amounts of information about a person. The information can include, health concerns, your shopping habits and visits to sites that you might believe no one knows about because you do so "incognito". Your ISP can know how and where you bank, your political views and sexual orientation based on websites you visit. Opening a browser window or opening an app can reveal when you’re at home and when you’re not.
Internet service providers have said that doing so allows showing a user more relevant advertising. They want subscribers to believe that web browsing history and app usage should not count as “sensitive” information.
The FCC has privacy rules for phones and cable television, but none for internet service providers. In October of last year the agency introduced privacy rules that will prevent ISP's from collecting and selling digital information about individuals including the websites they visited and the apps they used.
The Broadband Consumer Privacy Proposal will require broadband providers to get permission from subscribers before collecting and selling customer data. Broadband providers now can track users unless customers opt out.
Jeremy Gillula, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said, “Getting these rules was probably the biggest win in consumer privacy in years. If the repeal succeeds it would be pretty bad".
Many ISP's want your usage data to sell to advertisers. Your browsing behavior allows an ISP to create highly personalized targeted advertising into your browsing experience. AT&T tried to do this but stopped it just before the FCC introduced the new privacy rules.
Verizon has attempted to insert undetectable “supercookies” into all of its mobile customers’ traffic. The cookies allowed them to track all their browsing behavior – even if a web user was browsing in incognito mode or was clearing their cookies and history. The company was litigated by the FCC for not getting customer permission to track them.
It’s much harder to prevent ISP's from tracking your data than Google or Facebook. You can choose not to use Facebook or Google’s search engine, and there are lots of tools you can use to block their tracking. Consumers are generally much more limited for choice of ISP an in some cases have only one option in a local region. They can’t choose one of the ISPs pledging to protect user data.
Within the last few months, several major ISPs signed a voluntary set of privacy principles. They are pledging to insist on opt-in consent before sharing “sensitive” information such as social security numbers and opt-out choice for “non-sensitive” customer information. Your browsing history was included as “non-sensitive”. These principles are based on rules that were originally created by the Federal Trade Commission(FTC). The FTC used to be able to punish ISPs for violating customers’ privacy but is prohibited from regulating common carriers.
In order to guarantee your internet privacy you need to encrypt all your internet traffic. Some websites are already encrypted. Any web address that begins with HTTPS at the beginning of the URL protects your individual page browsing but the ISP can still see which websites you have visited. To mask all of your browsing behavior you will need to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service or using an online server and browser application set known as Tor. Using either system makes using the internet more complicated
