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from the I'll-determine-what's-sensitive dept.
ISPs that want the federal government to eliminate broadband privacy rules say that your Web browsing and app usage data should not be classified as "sensitive" information.
"Web browsing and app usage history are not 'sensitive information,'" CTIA said in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission yesterday. CTIA is the main lobbyist group representing mobile broadband providers such as AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA, and Sprint.
The FCC rules passed during the Obama administration require ISPs to get opt-in consent from consumers before sharing sensitive customer information with advertisers and other third parties. The FCC defined Web browsing history and app usage history as sensitive information, along with other categories such as geo-location data, financial and health information, and the content of communications. If the rules are overturned, ISPs would be able to sell this kind of customer information to advertisers.
The opt-in rules are scheduled to take effect on or after December 4, 2017, but ISPs have petitioned the FCC to eliminate the rules before that happens. The latest CTIA filing was a reply to groups that opposed the petition to overturn the rules.
In making its argument that Web browsing and app usage history are not sensitive information, CTIA said that the Federal Trade Commission has taken a different stance than the FCC.
"To justify diverging from the FTC's framework and defining Web browsing history as 'sensitive,' the commission and the [privacy rule supporters] both cherry-picked evidence in an attempt to show that ISPs have unique and comprehensive access to consumers' online information," CTIA wrote. "As the full record shows, however, this is simply not true. Indeed, even a prominent privacy advocacy organization asserted that it is 'obvious that the more substantial threats for consumers are not ISPs,' but rather other large edge providers."
Source: ArsTechnica
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:23PM (10 children)
www.privateinternetaccess.com - the URL says it all.
Well, until we discover it's all a giant honeypot. Until then, at least you're not low hanging fruit.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 21 2017, @02:14PM (1 child)
The only problem with that is, in my experience, it's really, really slow (esp. for establishing new connections, in browsing to new sites). Maybe I'm just picking the wrong endpoint.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @12:48AM
Try Singapore. PIA works great for us. No timeouts, good speeds. YMMV, as always..
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday March 21 2017, @02:22PM (3 children)
had them - worked for a while and them had to dump them.
they time-out after exactly 1 hour. you have to 'redial' every hour to keep the connection up.
they are in the UK. nuff said! ... ;(
comcast seems to mess with their connection. could not get it to work after I moved to a new location.
I have another vpn that works fine. the 'london trust' is anything but trust. sorry, but if its uk-based, its nanny-state based and cannot be trusted.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @03:48PM
No problems here. Several years now. Also on comcast.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:30PM
Have never had a problem in the 2-3 years i've used them (and am renewing soon).
I've had it run all day and night without a problem.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Thursday March 23 2017, @12:13PM
Funny you should mention that...
I use a different VPN provider and had exactly the same issue. They were as bemused as I was and had no idea of a potential cause, telling me repeatedly it wasn't anything they'd set at their end. While poking through the router settings - an Asus AC66U running Merlin's firmware - I see a warning that it hadn't synchronised its time via NTP. There's some weirdness going on in the code that hasn't been conclusively fixed IIRC, but a helpful soul on the support forum had posted a cron script to sync NTP every so often, something I tried if only to make sure the logs were accurate.
The point of this rambling explanation is that after the time was fixed, the VPN disconnects stopped happening too!
This could be a coincidence, of course, but I wonder if a persistent timestamp mismatch was causing the server end to drop the connection after a default period? Worth checking your router, at least.
(Score: 2) by Refugee from beyond on Tuesday March 21 2017, @03:57PM (2 children)
Isn’t it US-based?
Instantly better soylentnews: replace background on article and comment titles with #973131.
(Score: 2) by Refugee from beyond on Tuesday March 21 2017, @04:01PM (1 child)
Oh, the other comment says UK. Must have remembered that wront then. Still, that’s not really any better.
Instantly better soylentnews: replace background on article and comment titles with #973131.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MadTinfoilHatter on Wednesday March 22 2017, @03:58AM
Oh, the other comment says UK. Must have remembered that wront then.
PIA is US based. The name of the company running it is "London Trust Media", though which could explain the confusion. This [torrentfreak.com] is a pretty good place to start if you want a quick survey of VPN providers.
Still, that’s not really any better.
Actually it is. Companies in the US aren't subject to any mandatory data retention policy (yet). The downside of the US are the national "security" letters which they're not allowed to talk about, so it's really impossible to know if they've been served or not. The best place for a VPN provider to be based is probably an EU country that (IMPORTANT!!!) exempts VPN providers from the EU data retention law. This includes countries like Sweden, Italy, France, Bulgaria, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Romania, Cyprus, Serbia and some others. See this [bestvpn.com] for details.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 21 2017, @05:18PM
Using a service like that actually makes you self-selected low hanging fruit.
Most people don't care. With billions of people using the internet, you can't practically search them all (well, actually, for some less common key words, you can, but that's another story.) If you act normal and move with the crowd, you won't get profiled and pulled aside for questioning and deeper scrutiny.
🌻🌻 [google.com]