Every one one of us gains access to the Internet through an Internet Service Provider, or ISP.
In the U.S. your ISP has the right to sell your personal information, including your browser history, to any individual or corporation. They can sell your information 100 times a day, every day, if they choose. This is a significant source of revenue for ISPs. There’s a long line of buyers, frantically waving wads of $100 bills in the air, eagerly lining up to outbid each other in order to acquire this information about you every day.
Many people find this offensive, and have lost trust in their ISP to keep their personal information private.
What can you do about it?
Is there any way to shout “NO!” and make it count?
One effective solution is to use a high-quality consumer Virtual Private Network (VPN). A VPN acts as a kind of tunnel between your computer or phone and the Internet. It masks where your internet traffic is coming from. It hides your browser history from your ISP.
Adding a virtual private network to your online experience requires you to choose your VPN service carefully, since you’re choosing to trust your VPN provider more than your ISP.
A Transfer of Trust
You say to your ISP: “I don’t trust you to keep my personal information private.”
You say to your VPN Provider: “I trust you to keep my personal information private.”
When you use a high-quality consumer VPN, you express your disagreement with the careless sale of your personal information.
But using a high-quality consumer VPN is also a potent and effective protest, because you deny the ISP the very product they want to sell — your browser history.
What Can Go Wrong?
All VPNs are not created equal.
Like many consumer products and services, there is an enormous variety in the quality of VPNs. Unlike a t-shirt or a pair of shoes, quality issues around VPNs are highly technical and difficult for typical consumers to evaluate. Fortunately, well-known and respected researchers in the online security industry have provided suggestions and recommendations.
In December of 2021, Consumer Reports published their analysis and recommendations for consumer VPNs written by Yael Grauer and Steve Blair. Three VPN providers — Mullvad, IVPN, and Mozilla VPN — stood out for their strong privacy and security protections:
https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics-computers/vpn-services/should-you-use-a-vpn-a5562069524
As of December 2024, the Freedom of the Press Foundation published their 2025 journalist’s digital security checklist, written by Davis Erin Anderson and Dr. Martin Shelton. They specifically recommend Mullvad, IVPN, Proton VPN, and Surfshark. (Navigate to: Protect your research with secure browsing | Next Steps):
https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/journalists-digital-security-checklist
Other than being a paid subscriber to one of these VPN providers, I have no other connection to the VPN industry.
As an empowered consumer, it might make sense to try out a free version from one of these VPN providers first, just to get a sense of how they work and how they fit into your everyday online experience.
Does your ISP’s casual disregard for your privacy bother you?
“NO!” is a complete sentence.
— Anthony Collette