Loss of Privacy

Tomorrow, the new, sweeping data laws come into effect in the UK.  Privacy advocates are still warning of the potential dangers of such a law.

The new powers will, for the first time, place a legal duty on internet companies to store private information, including email traffic and website browsing histories.

Although the new retention powers will not permit the storage of the content of emails or phone calls it will show details such as IP addresses, date, time and user telephone numbers. Under the terms of the EU directive, the Home Office has written to leading internet service providers and phone companies offering to compensate them for the costs incurred in retaining the data for a year.

Phil Booth of the civil rights campaign group, NOID, said: “Inch by inch, the Government’s plans to map and monitor everyone’s communications are creeping into place. Today it’s retention of data, soon it’ll be a giant database to suck it all up. And unless we speak out and stop this, what used to be private – details of your relationships and personal interests – will end up in the ever-widening control of the stalker state.”

The British public were warned many times about this law becoming a reality.  Unfortunately, there weren’t enough people raising their voices about this and, thus, no politician shouted for it to be stopped.

British ISPs BT, Virgin Media, and TalkTalk are seriously considering using Phorm, an Internet tracking system, to track all page views of its 11 million customers.

The potentially lucrative system creates an anonymous profile of a surfer’s interests which is then used by retailers to target them with relevant adverts.

Phorm insists it is far less intrusive than the existing tracking and profiling of surfers by internet search engines such as Yahoo and Google. It says there is nothing to link a name or address to the profile and customers can also opt out.

This is deep packet monitoring and they are lying to you when they say that the profile is anonymous.  If it were anonymous, they wouldn’t be able to track you and target ads at you.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee believe that this is an invasion of privacy and it shouldn’t be allowed.

It reveals huge amounts about people’s lives, their loves, their hates and fears. People use the web when they are in a crisis.

‘It is very important that you can use the internet without a thought that, when we click, a third party will know what we clicked on in a way that might effect how our insurance premium changes, whether we can get life insurance or another job.’

BT has already conducted three secret tests of Phorm without informing its customers.  While it may have violated EU law, BT felt free to conduct the tests and, now, plans to fully implement Phorm.

Many users already use some sort of adblocker and this will only increase their use.  People will learn to use proxies and confuse companies like Phorm.  There are already programs that you can use that will randomize your surfing so things like Phorm will be thoroughly confused.  After using such programs, people will also switch to ISPs that don’t practice such invasions of privacy.

You can also petition the UK government to stop this from happening.

In Brooklyn, the Bronx, and parts of New Jersey, Cablevision is to being using targeted advertising to their TV customers.  They will do this by using data about its customers based on income, ethnicity, gender, number of children and pets, and whether the customer rents or owns the home.

The technology requires no hardware or installation in a subscriber’s home, so viewers may not realize they are seeing ads different from a neighbor’s. But during the same show, a 50-something male may see an ad for, say, high-end speakers from Best Buy, while his neighbors with children may see one for a Best Buy video game.

How would you like to be sitting through a family viewing of the Super Bowl, only to be shown ads for  viagara, porn, and condoms.  I’m sure you won’t be embarrassed if your neighbor gets to see your commercials for bankruptcy.

Cablevision matches households to demographic data to divide its customers, using the data-collection company Experian.

Experian has data on individuals that it collects through public records, registries and other sources. It matches the name and address of the subscriber to what it knows about them, and assigns demographic characteristics to households. (The match is a blind one: advertisers do not know what name and address they are advertising to, Cablevision executives said.)

But, Experian and Cablevision will.  You cannot blindly send ads to someone’s home without knowing the particular details of that person.  Regardless of the fact that advertisers don’t know this information, others do.  Now, that private information is going to be in two databases; Experian’s and Cablevision’s.  Is this really a good idea?

Cablevision has been testing the system in about 100,000 Brooklyn households over the last year and a half. By summer, Cablevision plans to have it in 500,000 households, and, if the introduction goes smoothly, to extend it to all 3.1 million of its cable subscribers.

If I were a Cablevision subscriber, I’d quit right now.  I don’t want targeted ads.  I don’t want my information placed in even more databases.  Cablevision is after money.  They haven’t explained what they are going to do to keep your information private.  They have merely explained that it is good for you to get beer commercials over tampon commercials and you should be happy with that.  And this is only because it has reached the news.  They have not sent customers an updated privacy policy in nearly a year and have not notified the 100,000 “test” customers that they are even experimenting with this technology to begin with.  They are looking for more cash for their business and, in truth, don’t care about you at all.

While Cablevision is not targeting what a person is watching, Comcast is planning just that.

But a competitor of Visible World, Invidi, is conducting a test with the cable company Comcast and will soon work with Verizon. It uses data from remote controls to follow what a person is watching, then matches that with ratings information and program guides to infer that person’s gender and age. It can use census data or data sources like Experian for further refining. Then, it shows an appropriate commercial.

Eventually, said Michael Kubin, the executive vice president of Invidi, the company will be able to identify who is watching based not just on what they are viewing, but also how they watch it: whether they channel change frequently or not at all, or immediately turn to CNN or to Bravo. That will help it show the right ads in households where multiple people watch television.

With information like this, Comcast should look to lose a few customers.  Why should this invasion of privacy be allowed?  Cable companies already make money off of its customers.  They aren’t satisfied.  They want more money and are willing to sacrifice their own customers’ privacy to do it.

Next month will be my one year anniversary without television.  I was hesitant at first to get rid of TV.  Looking back, I’m extremely happy I did so.

Two new bills in the House and Senate have been proposed that would force Wi-Fi hotspots, including personal users, to log data and keep it for up to two years.

There are several interesting notes consumers should be aware of.  The bill is sponsored by Lamar Smith, who claims that this bill will protect children.  He is also well known for taking money from RIAA and MPAA affiliates, who, in turn, want to eliminate open wifi and P2P.

If one looks at the law, it’s not even clear what is to be kept in the logs.

SEC. 5. RETENTION OF RECORDS BY ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION SERVICE PROVIDERS.

Section 2703 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:

`(h) Retention of Certain Records and Information- A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user.’.

Is this just forcing you to keep DHCP logs?  Or is it the information stored in RAM?  If it’s DHCP, then there isn’t any user information in the logs, only IP or MAC addresses.

This is unenforceable and major grandstanding by those who wish to appear they are doing something for the children, concerned about their constituents, and want to be reelected.  DHCP, proxies, MAC spoofing, and dynamic IPs are just a few ways to get around this bill if it should ever become a law.

With all the stories lately of Facebook keeping your information forever, and then backing down on that stance, it’s difficult for many people to continue using their services.  While you can deactivate the account, the information is still accessible to Facebook itself, so, here is a way to permanently delete your account, copy and pasted from Facebook.

Go to this page

Click “Submit”.

Your account will be permanently deleted within a few days.

This method is official and should be complete, i.e. no need to delete individual photos, comments, messages or items from your profile or anywhere else on Facebook!