ISPs Told To Stop Giving Up Customers' Privacy To Avoid Lawsuits

Legal Issues

from the stop-aiding-frivolus-lawsuits dept

While I doubt it will do much, a number of groups concerned with civil liberties and privacy (the ACLU, EPIC, and the EFF) have sent out letters to ISPs telling them they shouldn’t bargain users’ privacy to avoid lawsuits. This is a response to the growing practice of companies asking for info from ISPs to find out who “anonymous” posters are. Currently, many ISPs don’t inform the poster themselves that their information has been given up. These groups think the ISPs, at the very least, need to clearly state their policies concerning those requests. Most of the time, the requests are frivolous lawsuits intended to shut someone up, but the ISPs often give up private information without any notification to the people involved.