Congress Voted to Kill Online Privacy Regulations – Here's How to Protect Yourself
If you wanted your regular 1:00am Google Search of prancing kittens to stay between you and your browser… welp. Your mother and I need to talk to you about something.
In case you haven't heard, both the Senate and the House voted to allow Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to sell your browsing history and app usage history to data brokers and advertisers. One of your best bets in protecting yourself is a VPN.
To address both the "oh, casual" and "WAIT WHAT" parties, here's a little history for you: Last year, the Federal Communications Commission (the same folks who prevent you from being cold-called a thousand times by telemarketers) passed a bill concerning broadband privacy regulations for ISPs like Comcast and AT&T. Basically, they required ISPs to ask for explicit consent before selling information about what you're doing on the Internet all those wee hours of the morning and night (i.e, prancing kittens). But that also includes other information. Stuff like: your location (based off geolocation), financial data, health-related data, information about your family — even your gd social security number. All the stuff we do not want to be available on a free market. Especially without our knowledge.
ISPs can build an intensely personal portfolio of you based on your behaviors on the internet. That includes where you've been and what you're watching.
That was then, this is now. And in a seriously unfortunate turn of events, both the Senate and the House have decided it's now okay to release that information.
Your browsing history knows more about you than anyone. All your weird WebMD searches, the first time you looked into getting a loan, the last time you got a loan, where you're at in terms of paying all your loans, the location of your niece's school, where you're interested in (maybe) getting an apartment. It's all there. And then there's the other information, like your political leanings, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, etc. And if it's not explicitly there, it can be pieced together with your search history.
ISPs can build an intensely personal portfolio of you based on your behaviors on the internet. That includes where you've been and what you're watching. And while ISPs have been selling anonymized versions of your data for a long time (but, they claim, without revealing your individual IP addresses), this new vote towards complete deregulation makes your private data a free for all. So then the question becomes, who's willing to pay more for your portfolio?
If you're worried this means you now have to dropkick your computer into the ocean and start reading paper things again — chill dawg. You can still use the internet and curtail some of your ISP's efforts to sell your information. The best way to keep your browsing data private is using a VPN. A VPN operates over a private network of servers, and your ISP will never see where you're going or what you're doing.
A solution like TigerVPN keeps you completely anonymous with military-grade encryption across Windows, Mac, Android and iOS. This VPN operates across 15 nodes in 11 different countries and maintains high connection speeds due to low latency servers. Your entire Internet experience remains secured and private, end-to-end — and you can still enjoy those kittens. Buy it here.
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