US House votes to roll back internet privacy rules, Trump signed it into law

; Date: Mon Apr 03 2017

Tags: Internet Privacy »»»» Trump Administration

Last week the US Congress voted to overturn Internet Privacy rules that had been enacted by the Obama Administration. As a result, the telephone companies and other Internet Service Providers will be able to sell our Internet browsing history and other private information to 'advertisers'.

Examples of the data that can be sold include the domain name of every site you visit, and how far you drill down into those sites. The telephone companies will now be free to install "super-cookies" (that cannot be removed) into phones.

It's possible that in practice the ISP's won't be selling individually identified information, but aggregate information that doesn't give actual identities.

The tool used by Congress is invoking the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to address regulations enacted by the Executive Branch.

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About the Author(s)

(davidherron.com) David Herron : David Herron is a writer and software engineer focusing on the wise use of technology. He is especially interested in clean energy technologies like solar power, wind power, and electric cars. David worked for nearly 30 years in Silicon Valley on software ranging from electronic mail systems, to video streaming, to the Java programming language, and has published several books on Node.js programming and electric vehicles.