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Privacy considerations for home users

In light of the recent new stories regarding the recently signed legislation allowing ISP's to be able to sell your data
http://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/3/29/15107110/republican-isp-data-privacy

Here are a couple ideas and tips about privacy in general.


  • Don't panic - a lot of the info was already being gathered, this isn't that large of a change regarding scope, it's more of a change to who can profit or sell it (which is a shift for sure).

  • Remember a lot of the services you use today already gather your browser, activity, and search info (google, bing, yahoo, facebook, etc.).

  • ISP's haven't implemented this yet, expect to see new terms of service in an upcoming bill, or an email sent to you, etc.
If you would like to take some steps to try to preserve your privacy, here are some ideas and examples:

  • VPN (Virtual Private Network) - this in essence creates an encrypted tunnel between two points on the Internet. One point being your system or home network, and the other being the VPN endpoint device or system. Not all VPN's are created equal, you have little to no visibility to what your VPN provider will do with your data and how they will manage it (yes they can potentially also sell/mine/store/transmit/receive a search warrant). In some cases this may be even "worse" than your ISP.

  • Use a browser plug in to obscure your activity. Depending on the type of browser plug in, it can encrypt your traffic, obscure it, or generate a lot of meaningless traffic with the intent of obscuring your actual traffic.   

  • Use file level encryption (such as PGP) for encrypting stand alone files that you transmit across the Internet. Be sure to manage your keys appropriately (never share your private key, and store it safely).



 I don't see much of a specific risk at this point, I will continue to encrypt sensitive documents (mostly using PGP) and anything I send across the internet that I don't want casual eyes looking at. Browser history I think is probably already exposed thanks to Google, etc. so I don't think this changes much, except who is/can sell your info. I will use VPNs for work activity (already have) but that's probably it.



Additional links and tool options

VPN references:


  • http://lifehacker.com/5940565/why-you-should-start-using-a-vpn-and-how-to-choose-the-best-one-for-your-needs
  • https://arstechnica.com/security/2016/06/aiming-for-anonymity-ars-assesses-the-state-of-vpns-in-2016/
VPN providers:

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/network/



Browser plug-ins:

https://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/

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