U.S. Senate Says ISPs Can Share Your Browsing History Without Permission

[engine]

This news seems a backward step, imho. It's a complete landscape change, and I suspect it'll come under further scrutiny.

It really does seem a stupid idea, and I wonder if it'll change people's views of what they browse for and how they go about it.
It's like remarketing on steroids.

The US Senate has voted to overturn consumer-friendly internet privacy rules that would have prevented internet providers from sharing your web browsing history without permission. U.S. Senate Says ISPs Can Share Your Browsing History Without Permission [theverge.com]

What makes this reversal particularly damaging is that it won’t just undo these privacy rules, but it’ll prevent the FCC from passing similar privacy rules in the future. That means that the FCC won’t be able to pass strict privacy rules again, even if opinions change in Congress.

[Marshall]

I wonder which lobbying groups were behind this one.

[keyplyr]

"Share" makes it sound almost innocuous. This new vote allows ISPs to package your usage data into various products to be sold to undivulged 3rd parties, for undivulged reasons... all without your consent or notification.

And now since FCC chairman Ajit Pai has announced the reversal of net neutrality, US providers can claim use of their networks, so even if you connect from ISPs outside US, if you visit sites across US networks your history is also sellable. [webmasterworld.com...]

[RhinoFish]

Trying to hide our data, or rely on politicians to protect it, isn't working. We need ways to randomly poison our data, so it's utterly useless.

[phranque]

Same as it ever was...

The title should be changed to "... Can Continue to Share..." and the key quote from the article is "would have prevented".

[J_RaD]

The FCC debated these rules for a number of months and finally enacted them in October at the end of the Obama administration. The FCC has more power than the FTC, so the rules are stronger and more specific than the older FTC regime. You can see the rules here. (The actual rules are just Appendix A on pg 170)
[apps.fcc.gov...]

[engine]

What a mixed up mess.
Does the average joe know where they stand on this: I suspect not.

The U.S. House voted on Tuesday 215-205 to repeal regulations requiring internet service providers to do more to protect customers' privacy than websites like Alphabet Inc's Google or Facebook Inc. Congress sends White House repeal of broadband privacy rules [reuters.com]

[NickMNS]

This is amazing, finally a government that is doing it's job by protecting it constituents' personal information from certain companies that have had exclusive access to this data, now instead allowing all companies, that have not participated in the direct collection of the data, the opportunity to increase profits by selling additional products and information. If what I wrote didn't make sense, it is because I haven't intentionally tried to improve the readability and understandability choosing instead to make it not more unclear.

Take away's - You can opt out. Previously you need to opt-in, which obviously nobody did. So now you must contact your isp opt-out.

Question? How much data can your ISP collect about your browsing history. It seems obvious that meta data is accessible to them, like the sites you visit, when and for how long. But how much of the content can they see? One congressman in opposition suggested that his ISP could know what underwear he purchased online. Is that true? And what if you factor in SSL? What if you use a VPN? (The VPN only pushes the problem down the line, as now the VPN has access to all your data).

[edited by: not2easy at 6:57 pm (utc) on Mar 29, 2017]
[edit reason] removed specifics [/edit]