FCC Passes Broad Privacy Rules, Limits Behavioral Advertising By Broadband Providers

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday passed sweeping privacy rules that limit broadband providers' ability to engage in online behavioral advertising. The rules, passed by a 3-2 vote, prohibit Internet service providers from drawing on information about subscribers' Web activity and app usage for ad targeting. "It is the consumer's information. It is not the information of the network the consumer hires to deliver that information," FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said Thursday morning shortly before the vote. "The consumer has the right to make a decision about how her or his information is used." The new rules apply only to companies that provide consumers with access to broadband, like Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon. Web publishers, search engines, social networks and other so-called "edge providers," aren't bound by the new rules and need not obtain users' explicit permission to draw on data about their Web use for ad purposes. The regulations mark a "common sense step," Wheeler said. He added that the privacy order has the effect of "extending to the Internet the same kinds of concepts that we have for decades extended to the telephone network."