Slashdot Mirror
UK ISP Admitted to Spying on Customers
esocid writes "BT, an ISP located in the UK, tested secret spyware on tens of thousands of its broadband customers without their knowledge, it admitted yesterday. The scandal came to light only after some customers stumbled across tell-tale signs of spying. At first, they were wrongly told a software virus was to blame. BT said it randomly chose 36,000 broadband users for a 'small-scale technical trial' in 2006 and 2007. The monitoring system, developed by U.S. software company Phorm, formerly known as 121Media, known for being deeply involved in spyware, accesses information from a computer. It then scans every website a customer visits, silently checking for keywords and building up a unique picture of their interests. Executives insisted they had not broken the law and said no 'personally identifiable information' had been shared or divulged."
Why on Earth wouldn't BT just do this on their side of the connection? EVERYTHING that the user gets goes through their pipes, their routers. Just install some monitoring hardware+software and be done with it. There doesn't seem to be any logical reason to do this on a users computer. That's just plain stupid.
The only difference is that you don't have access to encrypted data and "other applications" installed by the user. The stuff they claim to have logged and analyzed is more easily obtainable from their own side.