FCC To Propose New Privacy Rules for Internet Service Providers

Personal privacy continues to be a hot button item for many of us as we embrace new digital communication technologies.  Most recently, the Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Thomas Wheeler, announced plans to propose new rules limiting what personal information can be sold by Internet Service Providers. (ISPs)   An ISP is your connection to the Internet.  These companies provide the wire or fiber coming into you house or business. In our area the leading ISPs are Cincinnati Bell, Comcast and Time Warner Cable.  In most cases, other than supplying email accounts, ISPs serve only as the intermediary between you and the plethora of online services like Facebook, Netflix, Skype, Pandora and thousands of thousands of other apps.

Currently most all of these ISPs capture copious information about which sites you visit and even what information or product you are searching for.  This information is extremely valuable to companies who want to sell you something and, as such, a source of significant revenue to the ISPs when they sell this information to those companies.  It is no coincidence that an hour after you search for some item or service on line that often you will see a slick advertisement on your Facebook page for that very item.

Chairman Wheeler is proposing that this practice of selling usage information should be better communicated by the ISPs to the consumer and that the consumer must “opt in” to allow their information to be shared.

When signing up for most any service or app, before downloading or using it we are faced with “accepting” the terms of an agreement written in legal and technical terms which would befuddle even the most educated among us.  Since they are almost biblical in length, most of us just click the box and go on our merry digital way.  Buried deep in your ISP agreement is your permission to allow the sale of your information to third parties.

The proposed rules would change this permission process requiring you to click a specific box allowing the sale of your usage information rather than having this permission buried in the agreement text. 

ISP’s contend that the revenue from the sale of this information helps keep their monthly fees low.  This may be the case and the rules would allow for some flexibility in pricing if you allow your information to be sold.

These new rules are still in the development phase and would need to go through the process of public comment before being considered by the entire commission.  This normally takes several months.  I will stay on top of it.