The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Thursday proposed new rules that regulate how Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can use and share customer data, which privacy and technology advocates called a “decisive step to protect consumers.”
The proposed rules (pdf), to be voted on at the commission’s March 31 meeting, would require ISPs to disclose how users’ online activity may be collected and require them to increase safeguards against hacking and identity theft, or other unauthorized breaches.
It’s the FCC’s first major regulatory undertaking after its vote in February 2015 designating the internet to be a public service. By reclassifying ISPs as utilities under Title II of the Communications Act, the FCC was required by law to create privacy rules for them.
Providers will still be able to use customer data or share it with affiliates to market other communications services, but the rules would give users the ability to opt out of such programs—and if the ISPs want to use customer data for any other purpose, they would have to obtain “affirmative ‘opt-in’ consent” from users.
“Given the central role the internet plays in our daily lives and the amount and sensitivity of the data we share online, consumers need to be put in the driver’s seat,” said Katharina Kopp, director of privacy and data at the Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group. “Giving individuals the opportunity to affirmatively consent to uses of their broadband data for purposes unrelated to providing communications services is fair and will give them some much needed control.”
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ISPs have an “unobstructed view” of users’ unencrypted activity on the internet, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler noted in a fact sheet on the proposal. Even when activity is encrypted, the providers can still see what websites users visit and how long they spend on them.
“When consumers sign up for internet service, they shouldn’t have to sign away their right to privacy,” Wheeler wrote.
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