Technology

Senate votes to undo Internet Privacy laws?

Let’s give a round of applause to our excellent administration, huh?  Crickets.
When you think of lawmakers, you think of people, who have the best interests of the people in mind, not the best interests of businesses; however, this is exactly what we are seeing with the most recent news from Washington.
The Senate voted to repeal a set of rules that were established to keep consumers (me and YOU) data safe by barring ISPs from selling and sharing usage data.  Nowadays, everyone wants to be the next Google or Facebook and have all of your data.  Some companies are straight-forward with what they do with your data, like Google — others are a little more nefarious.  It is clear that this is a move to sponsor more business activities on the sides of AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and others — not protect the people.
Isn’t our data going through enough channels already?  Now, we additionally have to worry about what are ISPs are going to do with our information — while they should be doing nothing more than providing the pipe for access.
This is nothing more than a pathetic money grab.
What should you do?
  • Read/Scan all End-User License Agreements (look for keywords and phrases such as “data”, “share” and “other companies”)
  • Limit what level of access social media accounts have to your data
  • Use a VPN when possible, especially on public and untrusted WiFi (lean more about VPN, here)
TLDR; Senate votes to kill internet privacy, let’s hope the House stops it.