Congress just passed a bill that will allow all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the US to collect personally identifiable data about your browsing history and online activity, and sell the data to highest bidding advertisers. It’s a landmark bill that will strip us consumers from our privacy.
What is this FCC repeal bill and what does it do?
On March 28, 2017, the Senate Joint Resolution 34 was passed by the House of Representatives as well. The bill is a repeal of broadband privacy regulations from the FCC in 2016. Under those old regulations, ISPs could not share customers’ private data. That’s all about to change.
What does it mean to my privacy?
This is a pretty big deal.
With this new deregulation bill, the ISPs are free to use their customer’s private data for financial gain by selling it to advertisers. Those advertisers would then have all of your Internet browsing history to serve you hyper targeted ads on a level like we’ve never seen before.
People have always gravitated to criticizing Google, Facebook, and Amazon for their data collection and invasion of privacy to target you with ads. However, in comparison, ISPs selling your data would be exponentially worse because they can collect everything about the online activity of your entire house, not just what you do on their website or their browser.
What can we do about it?
First, we can hope, pray, (and maybe tweet) that our new President, Donald Trump, vetoes this bill. But, judging by his big stance on deregulation, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
The only thing left that we can all do to protect our online privacy is to use a VPN when we browse the Internet.
A VPN gives you a virtual private network where all of your Internet traffic is encrypted and sent through a proxy VPN server automatically.
When you are subscribed to a VPN service, you install their app, and connect it, then you are protected from your ISPs data collection. All they see is an encrypted mess of meaningless data that is only going to a VPN server.
That means your ISP won’t see what website’s you’re visiting, rendering their data collection on you as useless.
Choose a VPN to protect your Internet privacy
My personal favorite VPN provider is IPVanish.
Since I have a special relationship with IPVanish, they are offering my readers 25% off any plan when you use coupon code TECH25.
Also, keep in mind that IPVanish comes with a 7-day money-back guarantee. So, try it out and make sure it works well for you. If it doesn’t do what you want, you have a full week to decide and cancel to get your money back.
If you want to take your VPN to the next level to cover your entire house without having to install the app on each device, you can buy a custom router that comes pre-configured to work with IPVanish. Find out more here.
Let your voice be heard
Let the world know what you think about this new FCC repeal legislation that will strip away our privacy. Leave a comment below!
The privacy policy and Terms of Service of Google/Gmail and several major American ISP’s already say they can spy on you and give the data to anyone they please… and you are presumed to agree simply by using their services.
U.S. founding father Thomas Jefferson described the British government as “venal and oppressive”, warning that American government could become equally corrupt if criminals in government were allowed to consolidate power. The prophecy is now fulfilled.
I don’t like the fact the my whole personal behavior online can be sold out to advertisers who could up sell me stuff I don’t even want or worse used against me for any reason. I started using PureVPN 3 years ago and I see less stupid ads and websites tracking my profile on the web.