Flter & FCC Changes March 24, 2017
We have received a lot of questions regarding the Flter device and how it will affect the recent changes to the FCC rules that regulate what Internet providers can do with your data.
If you haven’t heard yet, as of yesterday, March 23rd, The US Senate voted to eliminate FCC regulations that prevented Internet providers from selling customer information to advertisers and other companies. Senate voted 50 to 48 in favor of less regulation and the changes are expected to make it past the House and signed by the President. The changes will take effect in the coming months.
Needless to say, this is one of the worst setbacks in consumer privacy that we’ve seen in years. In most areas of the US, consumers have little or no choice in what Internet provider they can use and, unlike websites like Google and Facebook, an Internet provider has access to every single thing you do online.
A closer look at the magnitude of these changes can be found within the EFF and Intercept articles.
The EFF further warned that without the FCC protections, ISPs would not only be able to commodify your browser history, but “[hijack] their customers’ search queries and [redirect] them to a place customers hadn’t asked for” and “inject ads into your traffic based on your browsing history.” Should Republicans succeed in dismantling the Obama-era rules through this action sponsored by Sen. Jeff Flake, the FCC would be barred from ever reestablishing such consumer protections in the future.
Ok…but how does Flter help?
The outlook for consumer privacy may seem grim, but fortunately for our users Flter provides several key features that protect against the invasive data collection that these new changes enable Internet providers to utilize.
Home network encryption
In VPN mode Flter encrypts ALL network traffic. To an Internet provider, encrypted data looks like gibberish. This encryption prevents your Internet providers from seeing what you do online which limits the information they can collect about you and sell to advertisers.
Blocking
Flter blocks 3rd party ad networks and tracking services that Internet providers are likely to add under normal web browsing. Serving injected target ads may be the biggest way for ISP’s to make money, but these will all be blocked at the router level.
Choice in VPN provider
We wanted to offer our users a choice when it comes to protecting themselves. Every Flter devices comes with a subscription to the Flter VPN. We’ve integrated our VPN and the Flter device for seamless connection and a great user experience. For users that choose to use their own VPN or another service that they trust, adding individual servers is incredibly easy to do within the app or web interface.
TLDR
Fortunately, our users will be unaffected by this repeal because Flter prevents Internet providers from being able to collect any useful information about you. This is why we created Flter in the first place, because we believe that people shouldn’t be subjected to these unfair and invasive practices and unless someone takes a stand it will only get worse.
So we wanted to take this time to let you all know that we are fully committed to making great hardware that protects the privacy and security of our users and now, more than ever, it’s clear why this mission is so important.
— The Flter Team
