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Communications Privacy The Internet United States Wireless Networking

Ask Slashdot: ISPs That Respect Your Online Privacy? 91

Posted by msmash from the help-a-man-out dept.
New submitter Rick Schumann writes: According to this story just posted here on Slashdot, Comcast is playing about as dirty as they can get. This is just about the last straw for me; are there any ISPs in the United States that actually respect your online privacy?
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Ask Slashdot: ISPs That Respect Your Online Privacy? More

Ask Slashdot: ISPs That Respect Your Online Privacy?

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  • Sonic.net in Northern California (Score:5, Informative)

    by fightinfilipino ( 1449273 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2017 @03:48PM (#54471897) Homepage
    they're also loud proponents of Net Neutrality.
    • Agreed. I can get 5x or better speed on Comcast, but I'm sticking with Sonic for this reason.
      • If you want a good ISP you need to use DSL, where there are plenty of competitors.

        This is strong evidence that lack of competition is the worst thing right now in the cable ISP world.

    • I'm fortunate enough to live about 1h from Sonic.net - I've used them for a personal ISP as well as colo/datacenter services. They are absolutely phenomenal. I don't think many people can say they're *proud* of their ISP, but I definitely am. Also, I have an awesome keycard for colo access, get to go through a Star Trek style authentication door (weight + handprint) and can play pinball/arcade machines in their eating area. Their staff is awesome, I feel at home when I'm there among fellow geeks.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Sonic is just about everything i want an ISP to be.

      A number of years ago now my Dad was having computer problems not related to his internet connection. Instead of calling me (he's weird with asking for help) he took his computer to a nearby sonic office. After a brief wait in their lobby somebody came out and fixed whatever issue he was having free of charge. They were super nice about it too from what he says. I dont think i've ever even heard of such a positive customer service experience coming from any

  • For example, I have two options, TW/Spectrum with up to of 300/10mbit, or AT&T with up to of 3/?mbit. Sadly no other smaller ISP offers anything reasonably above 10mbit down.

    Just get a VPN.

  • Statement from XMission, a local ISP based in Salt Lake City

    https://xmission.com/privacy-pledge

    • They just put fibre in along my street in Layton but apparently want $5k to run it to my house (about 20 feet) I wonder if they'll let me run it myself?
  • Sending a cease and desist letter to a site is as dirty as they can get?

  • I thankfully have a municipal ISP (Score:4, Interesting)

    by enjar ( 249223 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2017 @04:12PM (#54472075) Homepage

    I am in one of the rare US municipalities with a non-profit ISP. It's part of the town power and light company, and they also provide cable and phone service. Prices are fair, service is great and the vast majority of the employees are people who live here. We've had our speeds upped a few times at no additional cost, and we even got a refund on our power bill when the power company ran a surplus.

    When asked about them selling information, the answer was a loud and clear "NO, we never sell information about our customers".

    The downsides of this setup are that the support hours are not 24/7, and some services/equipment can lag. But given that I've not experienced significant downtime in 10+ years, I can deal with it.

  • I was actually pleasantly surprised. This article made me contact Frontier to see if my ISP was doing anything lame. Turns out they do not throttle anything, but they do prioritize for VOIP and VIDEO because they have higher packet loss possibilities. They also do not monitor or sale any user information. So I guess frontier is pretty good. I pay $64.99 for a 100/100 fiber connection.
  • Why should ISP's have to respect something that is essentially imaginary, an illusion created only by the fact that in a large enough sea of information, any one person can sometimes be easy to overlook?
    • What I shop for, where I shop, what I buy, where I buy it, what I look at for entertainment, what times of the day I use the internet, what times of day I pay my utility bills, who I send and receive email from, etc etc etc are none of anybodys' gods-be-damned business, that's why. The real question here is: why do you NOT care? Do you like having complete strangers make all sorts of assumptions about you and your life? How would you like it if you were denied employment you're fully qualified for, because

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )

        I didn't say I didn't care.... I only said that I recognize that any appearance of online privacy one might find only exists because one might not be noteworthy enough to pay attention to in the first place.

        Obviously it is ideal if people do not pay attention to matters that are none of their business, but I can't help what other people do, I can only control my own thoughts and actions and trying to dictate those of others just so that I might be able to feel more secure around them is just so much wast

        • Well guess what? Unless you're your own ISP, with your own connection directly to a totally neutral backbone, you're not in control of ANYTHING you're doing. They can do man-in-the-middle attacks. They can sift through your email. You can try to use Tor or a VPN, and they can write Terms of Service that say you're not allowed and disconnect you if you don't comply. Left to their own devices these companies will do whatever it is they want to do that makes them the most money from the most revenue streams, a

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mark-t ( 151149 )

            Well guess what? Unless you're your own ISP, with your own connection directly to a totally neutral backbone, you're not in control of ANYTHING you're doing. They can do man-in-the-middle attacks. They can sift through your email. You can try to use Tor or a VPN, and they can write Terms of Service that say you're not allowed and disconnect you if you don't comply. Left to their own devices these companies will do whatever it is they want to do that makes them the most money from the most revenue streams, a

  • Wrong Question... (Score:3)

    by link-error ( 143838 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2017 @04:22PM (#54472163)

        The question should be, "Which is the best VPN service to use?"

    • This is pretty much it. If an ISP is snarfing up your information as it crosses their wire, you'll never know it unless they admit to it.

      Of course then the question morphs into what VPN provider can I trust, since they'd be the ones to see the unencrypted stuff egress and ingress to the tunnel.

      Though I suppose VPN providers do have a more vested interest in keeping their customers data private, since privacy and getting around region locks are the primary use cases for most consumers that employ VPN in a no

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Anyone with good security and good router setup support. Move all data via the VPN. OS level software e.g. browsers and networks could be requested into giving out a real IP.
      The 5 eye security service are all over VPN users but all network use is now less readable to the ISP.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guises ( 2423402 )
      Ideally no, VPNs are a stopgap measure. If you can't trust your ISP, and you can't choose a better ISP, then you've got to pick a VPN and hope that you can trust them instead. This is true for almost all of the United States, which I guess is what you were saying, but... asking which VPN to use is not what the question should be.
  • I'm not sure if your question is serious or not. And no, Comcast, nor anyone else that I know of, has been blocking sites.

    • I'm not sure if your question is serious or not. And no, Comcast, nor anyone else that I know of, has been blocking sites.

      It doesn't matter because msmash is busy constructing a narrative. Expect many more stories bashing Comcast (and it's Comcast so it isn't hard to find critical stories, even if the connection to Net Neutrality is tenuous at best).

  • Besides pricing I've never had anything to complain about.

  • ISP Privacy Pledge (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Any ISP on the list here http://www.ispprivacypledge.net/

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jms1 ( 686215 )

      I find it odd that a web page containing a list of ISPs who promise to protect their customers' privacy, is hosted on blogger.com, which is owned by Google, who has a vested interest in NOT protecting peoples' privacy. (You can't even view the page without allowing your browser to run Javascript from three different Google domains.)

  • Does it really matter? If you're lucky you have a choice between 2 actual high speed providers, one cable provider and one fiber provider. But most people have to choose from one cable provider, much slower DSL, or wireless.
    If you choose DSL or wireless the speeds are very limiting on what you can do.
  • Easy

  • none of them, none of them do (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You think ISP's, with their bulldog blackboxes and echelon marching orders can afford to respect your privacy? The time's long gone when that was even remotely possible. Get a VPN, some of those can still offer it.

  • If you want to beat the Net Neutrality drum, please post stories that are actually about Net Neutrality.

  • >"According to this story just posted here on Slashdot, Comcast is playing about as dirty as they can get."

    Really? Looks to me like they are just sending a cease and desist letter to a site using their name in the domain. We might not like that, but this is not an abuse of power or their position as an ISP at all. They didn't block the site. They didn't flood the site. They didn't slow down the site.

    No ISP (that I know of) is going to support net neutrality on their own volition. They want the power

  • Earthlink (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    As of many years ago Earthlink was pretty good about privacy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sudon't ( 580652 )

      As of many years ago Earthlink was pretty good about privacy.

      Yeah, back in the days before the internet spy game got started. Then someone decided that everyone ought to be making money off the internet, and the commercialization of the web began. Advertisers taught everyone just how valuable personal data could be.

  • The ISP Privacy Pledge (Score:3, Informative)

    by _ivan ( 31342 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2017 @05:58PM (#54472885) Homepage

    About two dozen small ISPs [ispprivacypledge.net] (including sonic.net) have signed the ISP Privacy Pledge [ispprivacypledge.net]

    Does one of them serve your area? Perhaps you should consider giving them your business.

    Reply to This

  • Assume no ISP respects your privacy, and act accordingly.

    Maybe and ISP simply does not respect your privacy, but at least have the decency to tell you to your face, maybe the ISP "Says" it respects your privacy, but behind your back is monetizing your info, maybe they respect your privacy "Today", but are under intense financial/govermental pressure to not respect it in the future.

    So, Once you decide that NO ISP is respecting your privacy (instead of asking on May 23, 2017 which ones do and which ones do no

  • Click! is a municipal ISP, but sells their service through Advanced Stream and Rainier Connect.

    http://www.thenewstribune.com/... [thenewstribune.com]

  • Bottom line, we only get to choose from the options we have. Those of us fortunate enough to have more than ONE to choose from still have only a choice of those available where we are. And no, I'm not counting "wireless services" as ISP's. No rational person expects privacy from a wireless service anyway.

    Bottom line, if privacy is what you want, use whatever ISP gives you the best service(?), and put everything through the best VPN service you can find.

    Begs the question: Is there a VPN service that abso

  • Forced copyright trolls into court, very much against their will (;-))

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