Broadband providers say they won’t sell browsing histories
WASHINGTON — Just days after Congress moved to kill privacy rules protecting broadband users, two of the largest internet service providers said Friday that they would not sell customer browsing histories to advertisers.
In separate announcements, Verizon and Comcast vowed to protect client privacy and avoid enhancing their own profits by monitoring the internet habits of clients and selling the data to advertisers.
“Let’s set the record straight. Verizon does not sell the personal web browsing history of our customers. We don’t do it, and that’s the bottom line,” Verizon’s chief privacy officer, Karen Zacharia, said in a company blog posting.
A Comcast statement echoed the Verizon position.
“We do not sell our broadband customers’ individual web browsing history. We did not do it before the FCC’s rules were adopted, and we have no plans to do so,” Gerard Lewis, chief general counsel and privacy officer, wrote in a statement on Comcast’s corporate website.
The bill, which has passed both the Senate and House and awaits President Donald Trump’s signature, would roll back rules passed by the Federal Communications Commission last October in what Republicans describe as a “midnight regulation.” Those rules would prevent broadband providers from collecting personal data without consent, then profit from the sale of such data to marketers.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer left no doubt that Trump would sign the rollback, saying the Obama administration sought to favor social media companies and search engines at the expense of broadband providers.
“The president pledged to reverse this type of federal overreach in which bureaucrats in Washington take the interests of one group of companies over the interests of others, picking winners and losers,” Spicer said Thursday.
Critics of the move called it a defeat for privacy, and a backlash is building. At least two internet campaigns have raised more than $270,000 to buy the browsing histories of lawmakers and even their family members for public perusal.
One gofundme.com campaign that had a $10,000 goal has surpassed $193,000 in five days. It was launched by a Chattanooga, Tenn., activist who wants to buy the internet browsing histories of all legislators and their families and publish them.