President Trump Signs Bill to Allow Browsing History Sale

US President Donald Trump on Monday signed the proposal that would allow providers to resell customers’ browsing history without permission. This puts an end to the stricter rules that Obama proposed.

Under these rules, ISPs were required to inform their customers about the information they collect about users. It was already clear that these rules might be reversed because Republicans are in the majority in Congress and current FCC Republican Chairman Ajit Pai voted against these rules as a committee member at the time and wanted to get rid of them because they would be too confusing. are. Reuters writes that the rules had not yet come into effect.

Pai said on Monday that “Trump and Congress have rightly reversed part of Obama’s internet regulation plan.” He added: “The rules, which never went into effect, were intended to support a group of privileged businesses rather than online consumers.” He is referring to companies such as Facebook and Google, which are allowed to share user data without permission.

Providers such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T said Friday that they would not sell customer browsing history on their own. Reuters said Verizon already has an advertising program that uses anonymized customer data, including aggregated data that “could be useful to advertisers and other businesses.”

Congress passed the rules last week after the Senate passed the rules by a narrow majority.