Slashdot Mirror
UK ISP TalkTalk Caught Monitoring Its Customers
An anonymous reader writes "The UK ISP TalkTalk has been caught using a form of Deep Packet Inspection technology to monitor and record the websites that its customers visit, without getting their explicit consent. The system, which is not yet fully in place, ultimately aims to help block malware websites by comparing the URL that a person visits against a list of good and bad sites. Bad sites will then be restricted. TalkTalk claims that its method is totally anonymous and that the only people with visibility of the URL database itself are Chinese firm Huawei, which will no doubt help everybody to feel a lot better (apply sarc mark here) about potentially having their privacy invaded."
Doesn't really sound any different to what the search companies store. Sans encryption, nothing you do on the Internet is private. Caveat Browsor. Or, erm, something.
It's a Unix system - I know this.
It's the only way to be sure. I know of at least one German university which also filters all external web traffic through a proxy which blocks URLs, also supposedly to reduce malware infections. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The same technology which is installed to fight malware is also ideally suited to work as censorship infrastructure. Once it's in place, the operators will undoubtedly be confronted with the question why they only filter malware and not other "illegal" content. Once they've succumbed to that, the list of URLs to block will grow to include "unruly" opinions, videos of police, etc.
End-to-end encryption. Now.