Days after the U.S. Congress approved the reversal of Internet privacy rules formulated during Obama’ administration, Comcast Corp has announced that they will not sell the individual browsing history of the customers to a third party.
The bill in question will alter the regulations embraced during Obama’s administration in October by the Federal Communications Commission, which required ISPs to make some extra efforts to shield user’s privacy than website like Google and Facebook.
Gerard Lewis, Comcast’s chief privacy officer said:
We do not sell our broadband customers’ individual web browsing history. We did not do it before the FCC’s rules were adopted, and we have no plans to do so.
Lewis said that they are re-evaluating their privacy policy and stressed:
We do not sell our customers’ individual web browsing information to third parties.
The ruling side of the Republicans sitting in the U.S. Congress managed to pass the bill only recently despite a very strong opposition. The decision of the house will hugely benefit institutions like AT&T Inc, Comcast and Verizon Communications Inc. This Wednesday, the White House announced that President Donald Trump is willing to sign the revoking bill, however, it did not happen.
The rules required the Internet service providers to seek customer’s permission before they reveal their geographic location, financial information, health information, or family information along with their browsing history to any third party source for the sake of advertising and marketing. The websites are, however, not governed with such strict rules and are free from seeking any such consent.
The people present in the congress said that the service providers will begin selling the personal information of the customers to the parties making highest bid, while some of them even guaranteed to raise money just to buy the browsing history of the republicans.
Meanwhile, in its privacy statement AT&T has confirmed this Friday that even though Trump signs the bill, they will not make any amendments in their privacy policy and “will not sell your personal information to anyone, for any purpose.”
Websites and service providers do sell a bulk of customers information to other sources in order to generate extra revenue. Republicans argued that the discrimination in the rules will give websites the power of gathering more personal information than the Internet providers. 46 Democrats have requested Trump this week for not signing the bill, because most American’s believe that their private information shall remain private.
