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    Consumer Reports and The Verge Are Surveying the US Broadband Landscape

   Josh Centers

   It's no secret that Internet access in the United States isn't great.
   There aren't many choices, especially in rural areas, and ISPs often
   don't deliver what they promise. It says something that many tech
   reviewers trashed SpaceX's [1]Starlink satellite service, while many of
   my homesteading and off-grid friends rave about it.

   To learn more about the reality of broadband service in this country,
   Consumer Reports and The Verge are teaming up. [2]You can participate
   by performing a speed test and uploading a PDF copy of your latest
   bill. The entire process takes about 7 minutes.

   To get started, you need a Consumer Reports login. You're prompted to
   create one, but if you're a past subscriber you can use that existing
   login. No, there's no trick or push to get you to subscribe to Consumer
   Reports.

   First, the site walks you through performing a speed test. The first
   one it took for me was unusually slow. Thankfully, it provides a chance
   to redo the test if it's not representative of what you normally see,
   but once you've submitted your speed report, you cannot change it.

   Next, the site asks you to upload a PDF copy of your bill, and it
   offers instructions on how to obtain that from the most common ISPs
   like AT&T and Comcast.

   I take a bit of issue with how this is done. Consumer Reports says it
   doesn't want sensitive information like your name, address, or account
   number, but redacting PDFs is beyond the skill level of many people.
   (How many political scandals have broken out over the past decade
   because someone didn't properly redact a PDF?) It's also easy to think
   you've redacted a PDF by visually obscuring sensitive information when
   in reality the data underneath can still be easily extracted.

   Happily, Apple added a [3]built-in redaction tool to Preview in macOS
   11 Big Sur. Choose Tools > Redact, and then any text you select will be
   permanently removed when you save the document.

   If you're not running Big Sur, the best tool for most Mac users is
   [4]PDFpen, which is available on its own or as part of the [5]Setapp
   subscription service. Open your bill in PDFpen, make sure you have the
   Select Text Tool enabled (Tools > Select Text Tool), select the
   sensitive text, and choose Format > Redact Text ' Block. If the text in
   your bill PDF isn't selectable as text, you can use Tools > Select
   Rectangle Tool instead, followed by the Redact Text command.

   Once you've thoroughly redacted your bill, upload it when prompted.
   Look carefully because I missed my phone and account number in one spot
   on my first pass.

   Finally, the site asks a series of questions. Some are relevant, like
   your ZIP code and satisfaction with your service, whereas others are
   less so, like your political affiliation. I gave the vaguest possible
   answers, though interestingly, the political affiliation didn't have a
   'Prefer not to say' option like the race, income, and education
   questions.

   Over 15,000 people have already submitted responses, and we're anxious
   to see what conclusions Consumer Reports and The Verge draw about the
   true state of Internet access in this country.

References

   Visible links
   1. https://www.starlink.com/
   2. https://www.consumerreports.org/upload/broadband
   3. https://eclecticlight.co/2020/12/11/how-effective-and-safe-is-previews-redaction-tool/
   4. https://pdfpen.com/pdfpen/
   5. https://setapp.com/

   Hidden links:
   6. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2021/07/CR-Internet-survey-start.jpg
   7. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2021/07/CR-survey-speed-test.jpg
   8. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2021/07/Internet-bill-redacted.png

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