5 Things You Should Know About the FCC’s Proposed Privacy Rules
It stops Verizon’s zombie cookie in its tracks, but allows AT&T to keep charging customers extra if they want privacy.
It stops Verizon’s zombie cookie in its tracks, but allows AT&T to keep charging customers extra if they want privacy.
By ProPublica
Last week, the Federal Communications Commission proposed new privacy rules for Internet providers. The proposal was immediately praised by privacy advocates as “a major step forward” and lambasted by AT&T as an effort to place a “thumb on the scale in favor of Internet companies.”
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler stopped by our offices to explain the proposal, which will be voted on by the commission later this year after a period of public comment. Here is what you need to know about the proposed rules.
It is meant to provide the same level of privacy protection to Internet customers’ data that companies must, by law, apply to telephone customers’ data.
Wheeler said the proposal includes Internet activities tied to a unique identifying number rather than a person’s actual name or phone number. Under the proposed rules, Internet providers could not, without consent, track customers using a unique number tied to a customer’s Internet activity or phone location.
As part of the settlement, Verizon agreed to allow customers to opt in to any future uses of the tracking technique. But the settlement did not apply to Verizon subsidiary AOL’s use of the tracking number.
Wheeler said that the proposed privacy rules “would overrule the consent decree.” The proposal only allows subsidiaries to use an Internet provider’s customer data to market “communications related services,” and so AOL’s use of the tracking number for advertising purposes would need to be opt in.
Wheeler said he was concerned about privacy becoming a luxury service. But he said, “At this point in the debate, we have to deal with what we can deal with today.”
As encryption becomes more common, that loophole will get smaller. But regardless of whether Internet traffic is encrypted, Wheeler said that it is important to protect information about what websites a person visits.
“I might be getting encrypted data,” he said, “but if I visit a cancer center, just the fact that I’m going to the cancer center is of interest to an insurance company.”