Time to Go Nuclear Against Anti-Internet Privacy Laws – thebolditalic

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Last week, most congressional Republicans voted to let Internet service providers (ISPs), the companies that pipe the Internet to consumers, harvest intimate online user data for profit. Since the big ISPs, such as Comcast, have near-monopoly power in most of this country, the only way for a consumer to opt out of this kind of data harvesting would be to not have a home Internet connection.

For the privacy-minded citizen, tech sites like Gizmodo recommend covering ones tracks by using virtual private networks (VPNs) or a Tor browser, which anonymizes traffic. But there are downsides to those options, especially if youre the kind of person who wants no-hassle access to the web.

And since most of us arent up to anything particularly nefarious, its not about anonymity so much as valuing the sanctity of the private details of our lives. This includes such chestnuts as personal health info and the sweet nothings shared by lovers. Cant all of us who arent Republican congresspeople and telecom-company execs agree that some things are sacred and shouldnt be profited off of?

Rather than hide, perhaps it would be most effective to render our information worthless to these greedy corporations. Please allow me to share an idea as to how we might take back our privacy from the powers that be.

The reason missile defense systems dont work in real life is that theres no good way to tell the difference between an actual nuclear missile and a fake one. If any industrious evildoer wants to get their missile past an antimissile defense system (like the one the US is installing in South Korea), all they have to do is overwhelm the detectors with dummy missiles.

Similarly, its time to go nuclear on the ISPs and the whole advertising-funded model of the web. They want to track our data and advertise to us? I say fineyou want my data? Ill give you data. SO MUCH DATA. Lets blow the system up.

Much like evading a missile defense system, the way to throw smoke into the eyes of enemy ISPs is to send forth a deluge of bogus information, flowing abundantly through the gnashing jaws of their ravenous data munchers.

The whole web advertising system is predicated on the idea that some fancy algorithms can get a decent idea of who are you from analyzing what content moves to and from your Internet-connected device.* On your computer, all the juicy profile data youre producing as you browse on your home WiFi connection will now be fair game to Comcast, AT&T, etc. And dont believe what they are saying now about respecting privacythese are terrible companies that will take you for everything youre worth.

A simple way to combat this would be for everyone to mix a lot of fake data in with their real data. But rather than spending lots of time fake browsing, ideally someone could create a program or a device to automatically fake-browse for you. Maybe this already exists, but Im searching through the Internets, and surprisingly, I cant find anything that precisely fits the bill. Yes, theres Internet Noise, a nifty program that adds random Internet nonsense to your browsingbut data munchers wont have much of a problem sifting out your real data from such a crude, randomized approach.

But what if someone came up with an approach that worked? Would you spend $5 on a device that you could plug into your computer in order to make your info worthless to marketers? Perhaps a USB dongle that has a program on it that acts as a virtual computer mouse. No physical hardware need be involved. Just a virtual device that, to the computer, is indistinguishable from a real peripheral device, since all the computer sees is commands anyway. The USB virtual mouse would be loaded with preprogrammed click schemes. You plug the device in, and the program opens a browser and starts clicking through pages. It enters in bogus information to text boxes it encounters along the way. When it gets to CAPTCHAs, it takes a different route, or perhaps it holds the page and waits for you to fill it in. Low tech is good tech.

Instead of feeding in a bunch of random searches like Internet Noise, I imagine computer labs full of teens furiously surfing the web, recording a diverse array of click schemes. Or perhaps a crowdsourced situation. Libraries of these human-generated web journeys would be uploaded onto the device. The important thing is keeping an analog-based solution to make it impossible to tell whether the clicks are coming from the real owner of a specific laptop or a deluge of fake data.

This phantom mouse could run around the web while youre away from your computer. Or maybe run in the background so that during all hours your computer is generating reams of fake browsing data.

If even a small portion of Internet users started doing this, enough doubt would infect the system, and the targeted Internet advertising business as we know it would crumble. Then we could all join Medium, pay our five bucks a month and live happily, advertisinglessly ever after.

Well, not really. Thered still be browsing data from your phone. I dont think running a program like this on an iPhone would be feasible. Maybe an Android device would be easier since they dont police their apps to the same degree as Apple. Also, this would throw the ball back into the court of Google and Facebook, who would still have plenty of data from your profile/account to target you well. But suddenly, Facebook and Google are looking a lot less insidious than they did a few weeks ago. And given how thoroughly dystopian last week was, thats saying something!

Heres a crazy idea: What if consumers could take control of their own data and then allow certain companies they like to opt-in for a price to their real information? But not ISP-creeper profile informationrather, relevant information the consumer feels open to sharing. For instance, I could give my favorite musical-instrument company the option of paying me or giving me discounts to tell them what Im interested in. This could be information I actively give them of my own free will that is relevant to my instrument buying. Heck, maybe I could get a free subscription to the New York Times or whatever news websites/blogs I dig in exchange for opting in to some targeted advertising. Wouldnt that feel much more aboveboard than this surreptitious profile building? And then they could send me deals. And then maybe Id buy stuff!

We cant just hand over our privacy to the biggest bribers of Congress. Until these products and services are implanted under our skin (oh, wait, its already happening!), we still have some say in this.

Maybe it seems benign at the moment, given all the other dire political stuff that is happeningthe lifting of environmental regulations, airstrikes killing civilians in Mosul, our government being infiltrated by Russiabut really, what the heck can you do about any of that? I have no idea! Whereas we still have a modicum of agency over our basic privacies.

Capitulating on this issue means pissing away fundamental, freedom-loving American value. Five years ago, such legalized intrusions would have seemed unfathomable. If Congress can sell us out so quickly and thoroughly, whats next?

My proposal may not be the most elegant solution, but I havent heard anyone else come up with anything better. Somehow, weve got to do something to stop corporations from violating the sanctity of your silly sexts and the stupid pictures you send to your mom.

*But the good news is that for the most part, your phone data isnt going through an ISP, and your phone company still isnt allowed to capture and sell your phone data. Phone connections are still defined as a public utility, whereas this new move by Congress stops laws going into effect that were going to make Internet connections subject to that same public-utility designation. So another pricey solution could be doing all your computing through data plans provided by your phone company.

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Time to Go Nuclear Against Anti-Internet Privacy Laws - thebolditalic