Does anyone have suggestions on staying private that my mom could easily follow?
I'd think not using the ISP's DNS server would be a good start. Either find one somewhere else or run your own.
The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
101–110 of 534 posts
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#102Is there another side to this debate or is it really this black and white?
> Is there another side to this debate
Yes, think of all the poor, unfortunate ISPs that are barely scraping by every year to give you your unprecedented internet bandwidth. These are small companies, owned by people who have children to feed. Selling your private data is one of the only ways they can stay out of bankruptcy. We all need to be a little more mindful of who we're hurting next time we enact this kind of draconian regulation.
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#103Awful. I stand to profit greatly from that data being commercially available but the personal violation underlying it is unjustifiable.
Who will be the first to start a "privacy-driven" ISP with marked up prices?
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
The votes in both the house and the senate were almost entirely along party lines. Every republican in the senate that voted, voted for this act and every democrat in the senate that voted, voted against this act.
Although this is mostly true, it's not entirely true (at least in the house).
In the House, 15 Republicans broke ranks to vote against the repeal. With five more votes, it would have failed. That's a very close vote.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/congress-sides-cable-a...
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#105Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#106I wish Google would offer VPN service again (waaaay back they had some Windows utilities that would proxy your web connection).
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#107Is there another side to this debate or is it really this black and white?
I'll take a stab at it because I think it's a useful discussion. Allowing internet companies to make contractual arrangements with their customers will result in situations similar to Google. Google shows you ads for things you are interested in, and in return you get a really great search engine for free. Similarly, if ISPs are allowed to collect information about your browsing habits, and sell it to advertisers, they will lower the monthly rates for consumers. The consumers can then choose whether they would rather pay lower rates and their ISP sells their browsing information to advertisers, or pay more.
The obvious followup is complaints about how ofter consumers don't have a choice. Perhaps the reason there is so little competition is that local municipalities enter into franchise agreements where in order to add internet to one house, you have to agree to cover the entire area. This makes it so that only big pockets and people that can influence politicians get the build an ISP. Also, we could look at access fees to explain monopoly providers. https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-ju...
If there were genuine competition perhaps real consumer preference would win out, whichever that may be. Rather than deciding how much people value privacy, perhaps we should let people choose for themselves at a level other than the federal one.
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#108Please do not complain into the echo chamber of comments here. Please take a moment to support the EFF, call your representatives, and speak to friends and family. EFF: https://www.eff.org/ Find your reps: https://tryvoices.com/
If my rep already voted Nay, what else can I realistically do?
Keep the pressure up. If ISPs actually do almost any of the acts that this repeal enable, this vote will have ramifications that politicians will want to distance themselves from.
With over 20,000 phone calls to Congress in just 48 hours, this is now on the scopes of current congresspeople (and those who would like to campaign against them).
(And please consider joining EFF as a recurring dues-paying member. The more people we can say we speak for, the more impact our arguments have. https://supporters.eff.org/donate/ )
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#109It's a bit disappointing to see that aside from a few abstained votes, everybody just chose to vote along party lines. Do these people just rubber stamp a bill because there's a D or an R next to it? Even if it meant more nay votes for the bill, I really wish we had representatives that vote based on critical thought rather than what their friends were doing. I mean, as long as I'm dreaming too, we should give assemb…
One problem is that legislators need to make decisions on a wide range of domains. This leaves them subject to influence by expert lobbyists and party whips. Critical thought about an issue requires much more time and study than most people have except for their own specialization. I assume you know how to pitch manure, program a computer, and cook a tasty meal. Yet tell me, how long would it take you to butcher a ho…
> One problem is that legislators need to make decisions on a wide range of domains.
Maybe we should reduce that range of issues by cutting down the amount of regulation that the government is responsible for maintaining.
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#110Could and should have been filibustered in the Senate
edit: note Senate....