Are you being watched?

Is anyone else bothered these days that their every click and web page visit is logged?

And not it's not (only) for GCHQ (although tecnically that's not law yet) but it is so your clicks can be turned into money for the big ISP's, to subsidise the cost of providing their platforms (i.e. being an ISP is about generating money from your info. rather than [soley] providing the connection and telco services).

After 8 years I'm leaving virgin to get off the Behaviour Science/Phorm/Webwise databases. I am also considering going for VPN as belt and braces.

It is not paranoia its called wanting my prviacy as a citizen of a free democracy. We are NOT China (in name anyway).

And for all those of the "nothing to hide nothing to fear" brigade you are welcome to post the IP addresses of your webcams. If you have nothing to hide I'll be setting up a streaming website for all those brave souls that dont want privacy. Can you also include your browsing histories, and any personal data in emails also. Google mail does like to know whats going on in your life afterall.

Most people realise that infact and on balance, we have our private lifes to hide.

I'll be paying more for less speed (yeah right - it doesn't feel like 10 or 20 mb when you're wating ages due to contention ut thats another issue, used to be lightning fast), but it's what an ISP costs if they are NOT nicking your [email and browsing] data to sell on.

( nodpi.org is there of you are intersted - take a visit )

I'm not paranoid. I just use a VPN all the time

But, on the plus side, free Spotify for three months.

Swings and roundabouts.

6 months on 100mbps. I still have it but I left over a month ago

They aren't sold as part of behavioural advertising and VM do not and have never used Phorm in any of its guises. The selling of such data and its use in this manner would be illegal as it would almost certainly leak personally identifiable data in violation of the DPA.

What VM do hold is aggregated statistics which show them the protocols in use on their network, they do indeed also log visits to websites, they're required by law to hold records of this.

But, hey, when did facts matter when there's a good tin foil hat session to be had?

If you don't want GCHQ sniffing your web traffic I'd get off the Internet, even going to Europe via VPN won't help as the directives on retention of web records are EU-wide.

EDIT: Is it me or does this entire post seem like an excuse to spam the link at the bottom?

Edited by Ignitionnet (Thu 31-May-12 20:11:00)

smells like spam

I use this....

http://donottrackplus.com/howitworks.php

I literally could not care less. Use my surfing habits or whatever they want to do

If it makes my internet cheaper. Larrrly.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

They aren't sold as part of behavioural advertising and VM do not and have never used Phorm in any of its guises. The selling of such data and its use in this manner would be illegal as it would almost certainly leak personally identifiable data in violation of the DPA.

What VM do hold is aggregated statistics which show them the protocols in use on their network, they do indeed also log visits to websites, they're required by law to hold records of this.

For long and complicated reasons the Information Commisioner isn't worth the paper the Act is printed on.

They do use behavioural advertising, although it's deeper in the T&C's now (http://store.virginmedia.com/our-cookies.html). You'll have to explore the Advert cookies. In there you'll a reference to cookies by Audience Science. There are now a plethora of companies offering to track what people do on the internet (for money of course so it's ok!).

I am not convinced that tracking peoples use of the internet is valid under RIPA, Copyright, Theft and numerous other acts of Parliament and I will explain in short form why - for long form goto badphorm.co.uk or nodpi.org. The methods used to "track" your use can be quite convoluted. The worst examples being complex "url state replays" where the tracking involves relpaying the exact visit you request and loggint the results of the web page served (this is the copyright theft bit - the owner of the site thinks it's you tthey are supplying the page to - a neat way of finding out novel ideas and stealing them on an industrial scale). ACTA isn't law in the UK, although the UK has ratified the treaty member states and the EU commission have to pass the treaty as valid under EU law. The main EU commitees have said that the interceptions will break EU law, including Inta's appointed rapporteur on Acta.

Freedom is about being free to choose, afterall.

More link spam.

This refers solely to tracking on their own website, so exactly what leaving VM as an ISP would accomplish in this regard is beyond me.

May I remind you what you originally said:

After 8 years I'm leaving virgin to get off the Behaviour Science/Phorm/Webwise databases.

If you and the rest of the online privacy crew know VM are illegally tracking customers outside of their own website and using Phorm/Webwise go report them to the police and/or sue them.

Your first post, as I said, is nonsense. I have no idea why you think leaving VM will make you immune to any of this, you're getting behavioural advertising cookies by being on this website and you do indeed have a choice, you can refuse the cookies.

Either you have no idea what you're talking about, you go on those sites and take their opinions as the gospel truth, or some combination of them.

Still all that said go use your VPN and change ISP, won't make a bit of difference with cookies as they are client based and layer 7, you'll just get the cookies via an encrypted channel and a different ISP.

So, again, what's your point here beyond to spam a couple of specific sites, which seems to happen periodically in different sections?

EDIT: Oh my God, Think Broadband are using Google Adwords, Rocket Fuel, and other tracking cookies. You'd best run away, never use the site again, get a VPN and change ISP.

Or just reject 3rd party cookies.

Edited by Ignitionnet (Thu 07-Jun-12 14:18:23)