No Privacy for You!
PEOPLE ON FORUMS, social media, and good old IRC love to argue. If you get a bunch of techies to actually step out of their respective bubbles to talk, arguments ensue. Red versus Blue, ninjas versus pirates, Macs versus PCs, Windows versus Linux—you get
If you liked the fact that the FCC was going to restrict an ISP’s ability to track your DNS requests and browsing habits so that an ISP couldn’t sell said data to the highest bidder, the US Senate majority gave users a big middle finger at the end of March. The implications for this are huge, mostly because just about everyone in the United States relies on an ISP, whether that’s the cable or DSL line to their house, or their mobile carrier. All of that personal usage data has been vacuumed up, and that’s set to continue for the foreseeable future.
There’s a big difference between an ISP scooping up data and a service such as Facebook or Twitter. Facebook et al. are opt-in; you sign up. You can still use the Internet without signing up for their service. An ISP is a gatekeeper to the Internet itself. Without going through an ISP, you can’t get online. Period.
There are things users can do. I’ve often written about using a VPN whenever connecting to a dicey open Wi-Fi location. If the rules going forward do not allow users to opt out of data collection, using a VPN at home may be a necessity if you value your privacy.
The problem with that is that VPNs often slow down traffic, due to the overhead of encryption and the need to funnel data through a single location where the VPN servers are located.
The other problem is that, unlike ISPs, VPNs are largely unregulated, and you have to shift trust from your ISP to a VPN service. If you’re looking for a VPN provider, look long and hard at the privacy statement to ensure that it doesn’t keep logs or share data with third parties. If you’re even more paranoid about having your metadata accessed, such as your billing information, find a VPN that accepts gift cards as payment.
And the last thing that will annoy you about having to use VPNs is that they are inconvenient. The minute you connect to your VPN, you’re cut off from your own LAN. I always forget to turn off my VPN connection on my phone when trying to turn off my Philips Hue bulbs, and it drives me nuts. The most seamless solution is to use a router that connects to a VPN with its Internet-facing Ethernet port. Not all routers do this, and most routers that tout VPN features actually imply that they can host an OpenVPN server, not connect to one.
Finally, be sure to find a VPN provider that uses the OpenVPN protocol. OpenVPN is a modern open-source protocol that’s more secure than the older PPTP. Linux users can find OpenVPN client plug-ins for NetworkManager in most repos. Windows users can download a VPN client from http://openvpn.net.
You can also choose to use Tor, though its performance hits often exceed those of a decent VPN. But again, for the paranoid, Tor will keep your browsing more anonymous.
There’s a big difference between an ISP scooping up data and a service such as Facebook or Twitter.