Posted on 07/08/2008 7:16:44 PM PDT by Coffee200am
So who cares if my Internet service provider tracks my Web surfing behavior or e-mailing to better target advertising? After all, won't that result in a more relevant user experience?
Well, not exactly and here's why. The lines between content, context and advertising are becoming increasingly blurred, and as a result the consumer is caught dead in the middle with increasingly less and less control over the Internet's most prized commodity: his own information. I'm referring to the growing reality that a process called deep packet inspection (DPI) is being used to build revenue streams based on your discreet — and what should be private — online habits.
DPI is the act of intercepting your online traffic and analyzing everything you do to build marketable profiles for advertisers. Technically, this could include any and everything that is transmitted through your ISP: keystrokes, Web pages, instant messaging, e-mail and so on. Of course, you'll never see a dime of that direct monetary benefit the way these companies are behaving today. Oh, and what about all that invaluable marketing data that could be sold based on a completely unfettered and omniscient view of your personal online habits? That's a gold mine in and of itself. This is powerful because it equates to building a profile about you based on everything you do online.
Current ad networks and Web sites look at only what you're doing on the Web site itself or perhaps within a network of Web sites and, hence, are not nearly as invasive as the wealth of private information that is represented by your each and every move while online. While an emerging practice, the stakes couldn't be greater and a number of companies are racing to commercialize user-profiling technologies at the expense of user privacy.
(Excerpt) Read more at dmnews.com ...
May all your packets be a stream of encrypted gibberish!
Can one ensure that cheaply and easily?
Well, you could try Tor, or if you have any machines in a colo, set up a socks proxy.
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