AT&T’s privacy plan may be short-lived and may not even be as bad as we think

AT&T hit a nerve with its privacy-eroding Internet Preferences Plan, which lets customers surf the web at gigabit speeds but also lets the telecommunication company see what sites they visit in order to serve up relevant ads. AT&T’s plan may be short-lived, however, if the Federal Communications Commission takes action under its new network neutrality rules.

Under Section 222 of Title II of the Communications Act that the FCC recently decided to implement as part of its net neutrality order, the agency can do something about Ma Bell’s plan. The next question is whether or not the FCC would use it. In any case, AT&T may catch less of your web surfing than you fear. Under AT&T’s own terms and conditions of the plan, it’s unclear how much of your web surfing Ma Bell can actually track in the first place since more sites have begun using the secure https protocol. No matter what AT&T is using, it is clear that it will not collect information from secure web sites that use https.

To truly solve the issue, you can pay more and hope that your packets somehow avoid AT&T’s packet sniffing (or are you just avoiding the advertising emails?) or you can write the FCC a letter complaining that AT&T’s Internet Preference Plan invades your privacy in a way you think violates Section 222 of Title II. Or maybe you can hope John Oliver picks up on this story and calls Tom Wheeler a dingo again.