Important Internet Privacy Message
Greetings. My name is Kevin Triplett, and I am the CEO of 天美传媒 Internet Communications. We have been providing internet service in this area since 1994 and I would like to take a few minutes of your time to discuss an important internet privacy matter with you.
You probably believe that fighting for your private data to remain private is a losing battle.
After all:
- Banks use and sell your purchase history on your credit and debit cards for marketing purposes.
- Google, Facebook, Amazon, and many other tech companies embed 鈥渃ookies鈥 and 鈥減ixel trackers鈥 into the sites that you visit which allows them to track you and create profiles on you to serve you targeted advertising.
- The big cellular companies (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) sell the location data from your cell phone to marketing companies so they can create profiles on you.
But there鈥檚 something going on with internet privacy and the harvesting, storage, sale, and outright theft of the personal information of you and your entire household that many people don鈥檛 know about.
Your home internet service provider (ISP) is your gateway to the entirety of the internet. By virtue of being the sole conduit in which all your data is funneled through to get out to the internet and back to you, this puts them in a unique position to gather every bit of data on you and your entire household that can be used. Every search you do, every site you visit, every video you stream, and every device connected to your home network can be seen by your home ISP. And if your activity can be seen, it can be stored. And if it can be stored, it can be shared or sold. This is not something that just started happening. It鈥檚 been going on for years. And in many cases, this is being done with your implied consent by clicking through lengthy legal documents that bury these egregious practices.
An estimated 80% of the US has broadband access at home. That鈥檚 over 270 million people that invite a company into their home and put their trust in that company to treat their personal data and privacy like I would want my own personal data and privacy to be treated.
Most households get their internet service from large corporations (think AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, or Frontier); smaller independent family-owned business (like 天美传媒) are becoming increasingly rare. In the past several years, smaller, independent ISPs have been bought by Wall Street corporations, hedge funds, or private equity firms. You鈥檇 almost never know about this since, at a glance, nothing seems to change. But that鈥檚 far from the truth.
Just because your ISP has a 鈥渓ocal鈥 office somewhere in the Central Valley doesn鈥檛 mean that decisions are made locally with their customer鈥檚 best interest in mind.
Wall Street corporations, hedge funds and private equity groups invest in businesses that they believe can deliver a return on their investment.
If profits aren鈥檛 showing up as expected, other revenue streams may need to be brought online to deliver a return on their investment.
Unlike newspapers, radio, and television, the internet and its rapid technological advances has allowed companies to gather a vast amount of data on people and tailor marketing messages to individuals with almost no oversight from regulatory agencies. The more data that a company can gather on you, the more valuable it is to sell to an advertiser.
Big ISPs have been heavily fined by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for playing fast and loose with the rules on what they can and cannot do with the information that they collect from you while using their services. [6]
The FTC wrote a shocking report about what ISPs are doing with your data which many people didn鈥檛 notice. While we encourage everyone to read this report to fully understand how Wall Street, private equity or hedge fund owned ISPs are violating your privacy, we share their
conclusions [7]:
鈥any of the ISPs in our study amass large pools of sensitive data, and that their uses of such data could lead to significant harms, particularly when consumers are classified by demographic characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality. Although several of the ISPs in our study purported to o@er consumers access to their data and choices as to their use and deletion, those choices were largely illusory, and sometimes even nudged consumers toward more data sharing. This further demonstrates the importance of restricting the collection and uses of data, rather than allowing ISPs to dictate how consumers鈥 information is used by obscuring how they will use their information鈥
Big ISPs like T-Mobile [2], Verizon [3], AT&T [4], and Frontier [5] have already had multiple leaks of customer data that is now being sold on the dark web, which they have all been fined for by the government.
Don鈥檛 take my word for it. Read the terms of service and privacy policies of your current ISP to learn about what they do deliberately with your data that they make difficult to find and hard to understand.
If you quit reading your ISPs privacy policy a few minutes in, I don鈥檛 blame you. It鈥檚 a lot of legal terminology that they use to hide what they鈥檙e doing with your data. But here鈥檚 the truth: If your ISP is owned by a Wall Street corporation, a hedge fund, or a private equity group, they answer to their shareholders, their bondholders, and their investors. What鈥檚 best for you, the consumer, can be a low priority compared to maximizing their return on investment. Your privacy can be seen as just another revenue stream for them.
Independent, family-owned ISPs like 天美传媒 are different, and I have deliberately made 天美传媒 different. At 天美传媒, we answer to our customers who live in our community. We work hard every day to earn your business by having no contracts, no cancellation fees, no hidden fees, and no gimmicks. We don鈥檛 make any money selling our customer鈥檚 data. Our one-page privacy policy is concise and easy to understand by someone without a legal background.
There鈥檚 nothing to opt out of. Your privacy is always on with 天美传媒.
I know that we are not the least costly ISP around, and here鈥檚 why:
- We don鈥檛 make any money by selling your family鈥檚 private data. We believe that the private data that your ISP can gather from you should not be for sale at any price. Our customers give us the honor of being in their homes, and we treat your family like we would treat a member of our own family.
- We are committed to keeping our operation local, with 100% local staff and facilities. Running a business in California is not cheap or easy., but we know that being completely local is invaluable to our customers and provides the best possible service to the communities we serve.
- Our employees are not outsourced script readers who are unable to solve issues that you have. Every employee that you interact with here Is based out of our facility in Galt.
- Our business is laser focused on providing the best possible service to our customers. All our customers receive business-class service, because we value each of our customers and everyone should receive the highest grade of service.
Our stand is simple: we don鈥檛 sell, rent, lease, give, or otherwise disclose information about your household鈥檚 online activities to any other entity to advertise, market, or train AI models on. Not individually. Not 鈥渁nonymized鈥. Not 鈥渋n aggregate.鈥 Period.
Where do you stand? I hope that you will stand up for internet privacy and stand strong with 天美传媒.
Sincerely,
Kevin Triplett
President & CEO
天美传媒 Internet Communications
Source Links:
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