This is an open letter to the politicians who decided it would be better if our browsing history wasnât private.
As we all know on March 28th House Republicans outvoted the Democrats to repeal the âProtecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunication Servicesâ law. President Trump signed off on the bill on April 3rd.
Iâve heard and read people say that theyâve nothing to hide so why does it matter?
It matters because itâs not just us but our kids, too. If you have kids with phones or tablets, kids that get on the web and surf around â well what they do online is now up for sale. Comcast or your ISP of choice or cell phone provider can take that usage and sell it to Walmart or Target or whoever else they want.
Itâs not just our browser history that we need to worry about either. Before the FCCâs privacy laws went into effect, various ISPs were actually hijacking their customerâs searches.
Imagine if you will:
- You search for âbrowniesâ in Google
- Comcast intercepts your search and sends it to their partner before sending it to Google
- The partner has a deal with Duncan Hines so the partner tells Comcast to send you to duncanhines.com
- Comcast sends you duncanhines.com without you ever seeing Googleâs search results page
ISPs were actually doing this in the past before the privacy laws took hold. Your online, personal data is no longer safe from prying eyes and people with money. Weâll now be profiled and sold and so will our kids and so will their searches.
Imagine again if you will:
- Youâre walking around in public with your cell phone
- Verizon knows where you are based on the cell towers
- Verizon analyzes where you went and sells all your travel/shopping patterns
- Verizon does this every moment your phone is turned on
Thatâs real life but itâs no different if you swap out âwalking aroundâ with âsurfing the webâ or âsnapchattingâ or âfacebooking.â
When Maggie asked me why the House voted to repeal the law, I told her that our laws often arenât really about protecting or helping us, especially in this case. This law repeal is about helping corporations. It doesnât serve us, the people of the United States, at all.
From the way I read S.J.Res. 34 though, weâll have the option to opt-out instead of the more strict opt-in as before. I hope thatâs the case. I couldnât find any settings in my Comcast account on their website and I imagine it would be the last thing theyâd add if they did.
Regardless, I set up PureVPN for Maggie and I to use. All our internet traffic is tunneled through it so Comcast and T-Mobile will only know weâre connecting to a VPN. Where we go from there and what we do will be off limits. PureVPN also doesnât log our data.
And for the people who voted for Trump, Maggie and I thank you.
I have things that are private, but not secret. Embarrassing maybe, but not anybody elseâs business. Itâs wrong because they have no business in my business.
I keep saying that what weâve seen so far is only the start. It makes me think of other times/places that started with something much smaller. Itâs too scary for me to think about. I know I donât need an excuse but Trump is a good one.
I remember having fun during Wâs regime ranting about the death of privacy, etc. It seems like a harmless age from here.
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Sometimes in life we gotta white knuckle it through the bad times and I was really hoping that weâd be able to make it through Trumpâs presidency without too much damage. But with what heâs done in his first four months alone, I donât think thatâs possible now.
GW seemed kinda like a drunken baboon, showing his ass, throwing poop, doing sign language - but always more or less caged by the people that stood behind him.
Trump on the other hand feels like a rhinoceros charging around unchecked.
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