Comcast, AT&T reaffirm privacy commitments amid flap over FCC rules

[CrAKeN]

 

The broadband providers said they don't collect customer data unless customers allow it.

 

Comcast and AT&T moved to reassure their customers Friday that they have not and will not collect and sell their personal data.

 

Both companies made these statements a few days after the House of Representatives passed a resolution that would prevent tougher Federal Communications Commission rules on data collection from taking effect. The Senate passed the resolution earlier and President Donald Trump is expected to sign it into law in the coming days.

 

The bill will allow broadband providers to continue to share customers' web browsing history and other personal data with marketers without first getting permission. The FCC, under former President Barack Obama, in October enacted rules that required broadband providers to get their customers' consent before they could share "sensitive" information about them with marketers and other third parties. The rules had not yet gone into effect.

 

Comcast and AT&T, weighing into the heated issue on customers privacy and data collection, both said Friday that they've never collected and sold customer data, unless explicitly allowed to do so by a customer.

 

"We do not sell our broadband customers' individual web browsing history," Gerard Lewis, Comcast's deputy general counsel, wrote. "We did not do it before the FCC's rules were adopted, and we have no plans to do so."

 

He added that Comcast will revise its privacy policy "to make more clear and prominent that, contrary to the many inaccurate statements and reports, we do not sell our customers' individual web browsing information to third parties and that we do not share sensitive information unless our customers have affirmatively opted in to allow that to occur."

 

AT&T's Bob Quinn, senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs, offered a similar statement, saying his company's privacy policy is the same now as it was before the new FCC rules were passed.

 

That policy expressly states that AT&T "will not sell your personal information to anyone, for any purpose. Period." It adds: "You have choices about how AT&T uses your information for marketing purposes."

 

Quinn said it's "flatly untrue" that Congress' actions would eliminate all legal protections on the use of customer information and argued "some folks are ignoring the facts."

 

Despite these statements, consumer advocates have argued that the new FCC regulations will ensure broadband providers can't sell information about where you've been online, what you're buying, the apps you're using, and where you're located to marketers and other third parties, like insurance companies.

 

Source

[steven36]

I know it;s the  privacy policy is the same AT&T been spying on the internet for years so there is no need to change it!  People should never forget  that AT&T is part of Prism

Snowden Documents Reveal AT&T's "Extreme Willingness to Help" NSA Domestic Spy Program

https://www.democracynow.org/2015/8/18/snowden_documents_reveal_at_ts_extreme

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Documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have exposed how extensively the NSA relied on telecommunications giant AT&T for its vast spying operations. Records described by The New York Times and ProPublica laud AT&T’s "extreme willingness to help" the NSA’s spying efforts. According to the piece, the company supplied access to billions of emails flowing across its domestic networks and technical aid in carrying out a secret order allowing the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the headquarters of the United Nations — an AT&T customer. In 2013, the NSA’s top-secret budget for its partnership with AT&T was reportedly more than twice that of the next largest such program.

 

Comcast been spying on its users for years too

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Comcast Spying On Users Tue, Feb 12th 2002

You would think that by now there would be somebody at big ISPs who would bring up issues like "privacy" before those ISPs decided to spy on their users without telling them. Comcast is now recording everywhere you go (and in some cases what you enter into forms). They claim it's for optimization reasons, though it's a bit unclear how they're optimizing stuff by recording where you go. At the very least, this is the sort of thing that they should have told their customers about, but they chicken out and hide behind their lawyers, by saying that what they're doing is covered by the service agreement the customers agreed to when they first signed up. Hopefully, like other idiotic corporate moves, there will be some customer backlash that will force Comcast to reconsider. Update: As hoped for, the backlash has caused Comcast to change their mind. Update 2: To make matters worse the government is suddenly concerned that Comcast may have broken the law.

 

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20020212/2356249.shtml

I dont know why people think they had any privacy before with there ISP  but they cant takeaway something you never had   its not just the internet ether its there cable spies on you. as well.

 

Your cable operator is spying on you and selling the data from your set-top box

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The complaints specifically single out Comcast, AT&T and Cablevision as "among the most egregious" when it comes to using consumer data without adequate consent. The complaint filed with the FCC (pdf) for example, notes that companies like AT&T often pull data from both the wireless and wireline empires to create mammoth databases of user behavior and personal information for targeted ads, without making the scope of this collection and usage clear to consumers or obtaining full, legal consent: "AT&T’s TV Blueprint, for example, “gives advertisers working with AT&T the ability to reach people based on factors like device, operating system, whether or not they’re heavy data users or the status of their carrier contract,” using “sophisticated second-by-second set- top box data” and other information. AT&T pulls data “from millions of set-top boxes” and analyzes consumer viewing history and uses these data to target consumers based on their viewing profile. Companies like Cablevision leverage granular data and precise details of household viewing behavior, and combine it with third-party data covering other intimate details of consumers’ lives to analyze and target specific individuals with video advertising across a range of screens. In their own words, “this set-top box level targeting lets marketers target customers that fit particular trends, profiles, demographics and attributes, and they can also pair the Cablevision data with their own or third-party data."

 

 

http://boingboing.net/2016/06/16/your-cable-operator-is-spying.html

 

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Corporations continue to spy on Internet users March 6, 2013

 

It turns out George Orwell was right all along.  He was just about 30 years off. Big Brother is watching you.

But Orwell also got one other thing wrong: the government is not the one prying into your private information.  Your cable provider is spying on you, and you are paying them for it.

Last week, Comcast became the first of many major cable providers to implement a six strike policy designed to deter illegal downloads. If you download copyrighted property illegally, you will receive two warning emails from your Internet service provider notifying you an infraction was traced to your Internet connection. The next two warnings will temporarily disable your connection until you watch a short video explaining the penalties of breaking copyright law. The last two strikes will temporarily slow your Internet connection to a crawl unless you pay a small fine to dispute the claims.

The consequences of the policy are fairly mild, but the idea itself sets a scary precedent. The six strike program allows corporations to spy on your Internet connection and exact punishment on you outside of the legal system.

In order to determine whether users are accessing torrents or file sharing sites, an ISP must have access to the user’s entire Internet history, which includes private information ranging from Facebook activity to bank transactions. Obviously, nobody expects Comcast to use this information to steal John Doe’s identity and buy a fleet of speedboats, but the entire concept is a violation of trust.

The bottom line is a cable subscriber is paying their ISP for a service, and part of that agreement is a sense of security. The six strikes policy changes the game so customers are paying to be treated as if they are criminals in advance. For every so-called pirate who torrents the newest My Bloody Valentine album, there are hundreds of average users who buy music on iTunes or pay for video streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.

Anyone who would actually be concerned they would be caught under the policy can easily find ways around it. The program gets murky when it comes to public Wi-Fi networks easily accessed in just about any Starbucks or McDonald’s, among other places, and hardcore copyright violators can spend the money to subscribe to a virtual private network, or VPN.

A VPN allows subscribers to access their Internet connection anonymously, and the monthly fee is a fair trade-off for the kind of guaranteed privacy you would expect from your ISP.

After all, if your cable provider acts on your infringement, you could wind up paying a lot more. The sixth strike, your ISP has the legal obligation to turn over your name to copyright owners such as the RIAA and the MPAA, and history tells us they will use this information to sue you to kingdom come. The U.S. judicial system has upheld Draconian fines for Internet users who were sued for downloading a handful of songs. With access to a user’s entire history, the RIAA could sue someone for months of infractions. If the fines they demand increase on the same scale, violators may find themselves in debt for generations.

Now let us suppose you agree these people are criminals who have no right to complain when they are punished. And let us ignore the argument that the punishment is absurdly incongruous to the crime. There is still a problem, and it lies in how the cable companies obtain their evidence.

ISPs use the six strikes policy to outright spy on their users outside of the U.S. legal system and coerce them into following copyright law. It sounds like they are sticking up for the copyright holders and laying down some vigilante justice for the little guy. But who are they really sticking up for?

What do episodes of “30 Rock,” Kanye West MP3s and Zero Dark Thirty all have in common? They are all copyrighted properties you could download illegally, and the same corporation owns them all. NBC, Universal Music Group and Universal Pictures are among the many subsidiaries that make up the enormous media entity that is Comcast.

Comcast is spying on your Internet connection to be sure you are not infringing on its many lucrative copyrights. They are already profiting off of you from your cable subscription, and now they are bending you backwards so you can only access copyrighted materials through legal channels. For example, instead of downloading new episodes of “Saturday Night Live,” you could always pay for a subscription to Hulu and stream them online, which is awfully convenient considering Comcast owns Hulu too.

Even if violators of copyright law stand on rocky moral footing, the use of the six strikes policy to combat them is a clear conflict of interest and a violation of trust. The power to prevent copyright infractions cannot rest in the hands of a major corporation that stands to turn a profit.

Comcast cannot continue to masquerade as the little guy. They are Big Brother, and we are all Winston Smiths. If we continue to accept their behavior, our 1984 via 2013 situation will wind up having an equally unhappy ending

 

 

http://thebluebanner.net/corporations-continue-to-spy-on-internet-users/

Really what Snowden  said about  AT&T was nothing people didn't know all ready as explained here

 

How the Telecoms Sell Out Your Privacy - June 04, 2012

http://rutherford.org/publications_resources/freedom_watch/how_the_telecoms_sell_out_your_privacy

Not only do they spy on you according the op they will lie to there customers to give them a false sense of privacy .  

[JeffDunhill]

How can they even think that this can actually make a difference for them! Stupid Companies!