4 ms·

Aussie telco sends user data to US to build web filter

58 points by maskofsanity 14y ago

sdiwakar 14y ago
Amazing, I'm quite surprised this hasn't been picked up by larger media outlets. Whilst there's nothing wrong with a 3rd party service accessing a publicly available web-site; for my ISP to _willingly_ on-sell my web access history to a 3rd party service managed outside Australia could well be illegal. I hope Telstra doesn't just get let off the hook for this.
josephcooney 14y ago
As a Telstra customer I'm kind of pissed off about this. I'll be contacting my account rep to see what they have to say about it.
damian2000 14y ago
When I heard Telstra, I thought - yeah that sounds about right. A truly disgusting monopolist.
- tfm 14y ago
  Hey, jinx! When I heard "US based company", I thought "Telstra". Optus would have saved a few million going with the cheaper crappier solution from some other bargain offshore location. I'm not happy that the user data munging being outsourced but it is pretty likely that the same activity is rife at the other telcos (or will soon be, once their copy-happy product managers get wind of the feature).
- Smerity 14y ago
  It's amazing that Telstra can still surprise me with their business practices. For those outside of Australia, Telstra have a reputation somewhere between GoDaddy and Facebook. They came to power as a legal monopoly, originally government run, and own the majority of all copper lines in Australia. Telstra was then privatised in three different stages and proceeded to bully the industry. For years the highest speed ADSL1 connection you could receive was 1.5 Mbit/s due to Telstra artificially limiting all companies who used their copper lines. Only in the last half decade have they extended this to the normal 8 Mbit/s[1]. The idea that the data sent over to the US was "completely anonymised" is laughable. Far more technically competent companies, like Netflix[2], have made mistakes in their anonymisation procedures in the past -- I fail to see how Telstra could avoid such a fate. If the data were ever released, it'd likely end up more like the AOL incident[3]. [1]: http://www.itwire.com/your-it-news/entertainment/7027-australia-breaks-through-15mbps-barrier-telstra-launches-adsl-2 http://www.itwire.com/your-it-news/entertainment/7027-austra... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize#Privacy_concerns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize#Privacy_concerns [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
dmboyd 14y ago
Another reason to use https, (and to deny telcos the right to run root certs)
- ontoillogical 14y ago
  The ISP can still track what domain you're going to if you use https.
emmelaich 14y ago
Discussion here: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1935438&p=6#r120 http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1935438&#...
robryan 14y ago
Despite all the criticism of the company, most who care about decent mobile internet are using them because no other network comes close.

58 points by maskofsanity 14y ago

Amazing, I'm quite surprised this hasn't been picked up by larger media outlets. Whilst there's nothing wrong with a 3rd party service accessing a publicly available web-site; for my ISP to _willingly_ on-sell my web access history to a 3rd party service managed outside Australia could well be illegal. I hope Telstra doesn't just get let off the hook for this.

josephcooney 14y ago

As a Telstra customer I'm kind of pissed off about this. I'll be contacting my account rep to see what they have to say about it.

damian2000 14y ago

When I heard Telstra, I thought - yeah that sounds about right. A truly disgusting monopolist.

tfm 14y ago
Hey, jinx! When I heard "US based company", I thought "Telstra". Optus would have saved a few million going with the cheaper crappier solution from some other bargain offshore location. I'm not happy that the user data munging being outsourced but it is pretty likely that the same activity is rife at the other telcos (or will soon be, once their copy-happy product managers get wind of the feature).
Smerity 14y ago
It's amazing that Telstra can still surprise me with their business practices. For those outside of Australia, Telstra have a reputation somewhere between GoDaddy and Facebook. They came to power as a legal monopoly, originally government run, and own the majority of all copper lines in Australia. Telstra was then privatised in three different stages and proceeded to bully the industry. For years the highest speed ADSL1 connection you could receive was 1.5 Mbit/s due to Telstra artificially limiting all companies who used their copper lines. Only in the last half decade have they extended this to the normal 8 Mbit/s[1]. The idea that the data sent over to the US was "completely anonymised" is laughable. Far more technically competent companies, like Netflix[2], have made mistakes in their anonymisation procedures in the past -- I fail to see how Telstra could avoid such a fate. If the data were ever released, it'd likely end up more like the AOL incident[3]. [1]: http://www.itwire.com/your-it-news/entertainment/7027-australia-breaks-through-15mbps-barrier-telstra-launches-adsl-2 http://www.itwire.com/your-it-news/entertainment/7027-austra... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize#Privacy_concerns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize#Privacy_concerns [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

dmboyd 14y ago

Another reason to use https, (and to deny telcos the right to run root certs)

ontoillogical 14y ago
The ISP can still track what domain you're going to if you use https.

emmelaich 14y ago

Discussion here: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1935438&p=6#r120 http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1935438&#...

robryan 14y ago

Despite all the criticism of the company, most who care about decent mobile internet are using them because no other network comes close.