Get Your Popcorn (and Personal Data), Heah!

If you’re not worried about the privacy of your ISP data, now might be a good time to start being concerned.

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate voted to make it easier for ISPs to share sensitive information about their customers, a first step in overturning landmark privacy rules for the digital age.

Those rules were passed by the Federal Communications Commission in Obama’s final months as president, and prohibited Internet providers like Comcast and Verizon from selling customer data, including browsing history and location data, without first getting consent.

Those rules also compelled providers to let customers know about the data they collect, the purpose of that data collection, and to identify the types of third-party companies that might be given access to that data.

From The Verge:

“This resolution is a direct attack on consumer rights, on privacy, on rules that afford basic protection against intrusive and illegal interference with consumers’ use of social media sites and websites that often they talk for granted,” Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said in the Senate today ahead of the vote.
– via www.theverge.com

Your personal information will soon be available to the highest bidder, and you probably don’t even care.

Until you do.