There has been a lot in the news recently about Congress repealing privacy laws that will allow Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to sell their subscriber’s usage data to interested third parties. The first thing to know is that the laws that have been repealed, were actually never enacted! We the people, are in the same boat we were in before the repeal made the news. I think we can all agree that any loss of privacy is a step in the wrong direction, and something that we all need to try and hold our elected representatives accountable for.
The good news is that there is no need to go subscribe to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service, at least not at this time. The data ISPs collect is not broken down to the individual level. It’s very broad and generic. For example, they are not selling the fact that Bill was on msn.com at 10 am on Monday morning, however the fact that 20% of NC internet users access msn.com daily is data that advertisers will pay good money to find out. Continue accessing the Internet with confidence, at least for now.