Comcast, AT&T and Verizon pose a greater surveillance risk than Facebook
Comcast, AT&amp;T and Verizon don&#x27;t have a single bit of data on me, I&#x27;m not a customer. As opposed to Facebook and Google being present on just about every webpage and gobbling up data about <i>all the people on the planet that have internet access</i>.<p>The article has this bit in it:<p>&quot;Your internet provider doesn’t just know what you do on Facebook – it sees all the sites you visit and how much time you spend there. Your provider can see where you shop, what you watch on TV, where you choose to eat dinner, what medical symptoms you search, where you apply for work, school, a mortgage. Everything that is unencrypted is fair game. &quot;<p>The last part is the important part: hardly anything is unencrypted these days (and if it isn&#x27;t it really should get with the times). So if that part of the article would have been adjusted to the present day situation that only thing that remains is that <i>if</i> these parties are your provider then they can indeed see which IP addresses you connect to (if you don&#x27;t use a VPN).<p>They can&#x27;t see what you watch on TV unless you configure your TV to tell them (or use a set-top box to choose your channels for you), they do not know where you choose to eat your dinner unless your smartphone leaks GPS coordinates to them (regular triangulation is too coarse for this) and they do not know where you apply for work and school or a mortgage.<p>In general this is a whole bunch of alarmist hoopla, yes, providers see too much data, no it&#x27;s <i>nothing</i> compared to Facebook and Google.<p>What should worry you is AT&amp;T and other cellular services providers access to your call records (which they are required by law to keep for a long time in most places) and SMS data as well as the possibility of them recording all your voice calls without your consent.