Last week, the Senate voted to overturn FCC internet rules established by the Obama administration that would protect the privacy of your web browsing history. Now the House will soon be voting is about to vote on the same proposed legislation.
If the House approves it also, internet service providers (ISPs) like Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Comcast, will be able to share or sell the information in your browser — like your shopping habits, your location, the apps you use, and information about everything you search for online.
The House will have a formal debate– but there won’t be any committee hearings or testimony taken.
The FCC rules discussed above were put in place by the Obama administration in October 2016, but have not yet gone into effect. So ISP providers are already sharing your information and location and buying patters with one another– and with advertisers. Without your informed consent. (All that fine print you ignore when you download an app or install a piece of software allows them to do what they do.) That’s the reason all those ads keep popping up while you browse.
Political parties also want this information. So, too, do insurance companies, car retailers — you name it. To avoid being targeted, you might be interested in protecting your privacy through the use of a virtual private network that allows you to keep personal and financial information out of your ISPs hands. A VPN creates a new IP address for you to use while you’re online, so that your real location (and identity) is disguised and hidden from data collectors.
