May 4, 2018
You need VPN! In the past few years, PCMag has seen VPN services go from being fringe security utilities to red-hot, must-have cyber accessory. The popularity (and necessity) of the once-lowly VPN is certainly due to the ever-growing legal and technological challenges to individual privacy. Virtual private networks are a tool whose time has clearly come. That’s why it’s so surprising that a poll conducted by PCMag found that, despite understanding the threats to their privacy, the vast majority of respondents don’t use VPNs and never have. Unsecured Traffic Of the 1,000 people polled by PCMag between Feb. 7-9, 71 percent have never used a VPN. That struck me for two reasons. First of all, the search volume we receive at PCMag for VPN-related articles is enormous. Second, many companies require the use of a corporate VPN when working remotely. That might explain why 15 percent had used a VPN in the past, but don’t currently log on. Most people, I assumed, would have crossed paths with a VPN at some point. And yet, the vast majority of respondents not only do not currently use a VPN, they have never laid hands on one. New (and Old) Threats to Privacy […]
April 23, 2018
Net neutrality’s protracted, multi-phase death scene has finally come to an end with a whimper as the FCC rules proposed in May, voted on in December and entered in the Federal Register in February finally come into effect today. But as before, don’t expect some big fanfare by broadband providers and a sudden ratcheting up of prices. Things are going to stay quietly tense for a while. Update: Although new rules do indeed take effect two months after entering the Federal Register (i.e. today), those taking effect are only part of the full package. The Office of Management and Budget still has to sign off on the new rules, after which time there will be yet another delay as they are filed in the Register again before taking effect. So although the new rules have taken partial effect, they are are still awaiting final final approval. Should you be worried? No. But you should stay angry. “Restoring Internet Freedom” may have taken effect, but the truth is that the 2015 net neutrality rules have been out of effect since the FCC was shuffled under the new administration. Under Chairman Ajit Pai’s FCC, those rules were unlikely to be enforced from […]
February 19, 2018
Oh snap!! As we all know – Karma loves to strike back. And according to a post from Fortune – it is on its way to hit the head of the FCC – Ajit Pai. The FCC’s inspector general is investigating whether Ajit Pai, the agency’s chairman, improperly used his power to benefit Sinclair Broadcasting. The television conglomerate has pushed its local news stations to run commentary segments that praise the Trump administration, and is currently seeking a merger which would vastly expand its reach. As reported by the New York Times, the investigation is focused on Pai’s decision to relax rules limiting the ownership of television stations by a single company. Pai reinstated a technologically obsolete rule known as the UHF discount, giving some television stations less weight in calculating whether a single owner exceeds a legal cap limiting its reach to 39% of the U.S. population. That rule change effectively creates a loophole that would allow Sinclair’s planned $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media, which would put Sinclair stations in 72% of U.S. households. That would represent a historic level of media consolidation, which has long been criticized as a threat to healthy democratic discourse. Despite the spread […]
January 1, 2018
You’ll probably recall that a few years ago, Netflix streams began mysteriously slowing down for users nationwide. Eventually, Netflix, Level3 and Cogent stated that the problem wasn’t on Netflix’s end, but was occurring at peering points, where they claimed incumbent ISPs had begun intentionally letting their networks congest by refusing to upgrade capacity. Why? The goal was to kill settlement-free peering and extract steep new troll tolls from content companies that wanted their traffic to reach incumbent ISP customers without, you know, being kneecapped. These interconnection issues were just a creative evolution of a longstanding efforts by ISPs to abuse their monopoly over the last mile. Level3 made a pretty compelling case that this was little more than glorified extortion. So too did New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, whose lawsuit against Charter/Spectrum argued that ISPs were not only using manufactured congestion to drive up rates for transit and content companies, but had admitted to manipulating this congestion to trick regulatory efforts to measure real-world speeds (starting on page 62, if you’re interested). Regardless, in 2015 the FCC’s net neutrality rules gave the FCC the authority to police these interconnection points for anti-competitive behavior, and act if necessary. With the […]