Three Privacy Tools That Block Your Internet Provider From Tracking You

The government will now allow your ISP to sell your browsing data. Here’s how to fight back.

- Ian Paul

 

IT’S OFFICIAL: CONGRESS has sold you out to Internet service providers, passing a bill that dismantles Internet privacy rules and allows ISPs to sell your web history and other personal information without your permission. President Trump signed the bill into law, which means that anyone concerned about privacy will have to protect themselves against overzealous data collection from their ISP.

Some privacy-conscious folks are already doing that—but many aren’t. If you want to keep your ISP from looking over your shoulder for data to sell to advertisers, here are three relatively simple actions you can take to get started.

Use HTTPS Everywhere

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s HTTPS Everywhere (eff.org/https-everywhere) browser extension is one of the first things you should install. This extension requires that all website connections to your browser occur using SSL/TLS encryption. That means the content of what you’re viewing will be protected from passive collection by your ISP. The only time the extension won’t force HTTPS is when the site you’re connecting to doesn’t support the protocol.