On the heels of Congress’s recent rollback of the FCC’s privacy rules, some web-goers had a clever idea: why not buy Congress’s web history?
The privacy rules were set to protect against service providers like Comcast and Verizon using customer web-browsing data for marketing purposes. Now that the rules are gone, there’s nothing stopping those providers from using your browsing data for targeted advertising.
To be clear, you can’t do this
The move has enraged web privacy advocates, and a new crop of GoFundMe campaigns (including one campaign launched by Supernatural star Misha Collins) has seized on an unexpected method of revenge: buying politicians’ web histories one by one and publishing them for all to see. One campaign describes it this way:
Thanks to the Senate for passing S.J.Res 34 , now your Internet history can be bought.
I plan on purchasing the Internet histories of all legislators, congressmen, executives, and their families and make them easily searchable at searchinternethistory.com.
Everything from their medical, pornographic, to their financial and infidelity.
Anything they have looked at, searched for, or visited on the Internet will now be available for everyone to comb through.
Help me raise money to buy the histories of those who took away your right to privacy for just thousands of dollars from telephone and ISPs. Your private data will be bought and sold to marketing companies, law enforcement.
Let’s turn the tables. Let’s buy THEIR history and make it available.