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Without regulation or a sudden increase in awareness, this sort of activity will only increase in the near future. Internet service providers who measure their

Without regulation or a sudden increase in awareness, this sort of activity will only increase in the near future. Internet service providers who measure their success solely by profit are not going to forgo this revenue opportunity otherwise. It's just where their incentives are aligned (other than in places like Germany perhaps, where people tend to give more thought to information privacy issues). Any thoughts on the best way to use the Internet while exempting oneself from this sort of analysis, without significantly degrading the experience? VPNs are the first obvious answer, but what's the best approach? Are there others?

timthorn 13y ago
This is unrelated to IP - the telcos are looking at mobile phone position, even for simple voice phones. They argue that they aren't violating privacy as data is only provided in aggregate for eg postal districts, but that's only their position.
- Retric 13y ago
  This can in theory be used for good things. Take Say a random 1% of the population each day and track there position and you can get vary good data on where traffic problems are. And not just where accidents are but also where people slow down which can be a sign of a pothole or something in the road etc. Granted there are huge privacy issues with this, however if you could track most cars you would get much better idea how to change traffic lights / patterns based on time of day and day of year. Because, small issues tend to propagate all over the place so small and cheap changes can make a rather large difference.
  - nraynaud 13y ago
    The projects I was involved with were more about appraising the value of a shop's position, the value of billboards, and also some time and space related thing (like "where do the people passing in front of my shop sleep?" and "what's the peak in my street?", "how many out-of-area people pass in front of my shop?"). But it's true that I also know of one project that uses phone data to check highway traffic congestion (A6 in Provence, France). It's also ad-related, because the data is sold to media companies whose major income is form advertisement.
- discostrings 13y ago
  My initial thoughts were about combining web browsing history and internet usage with location information, but you're right--a lot of analysis could be done purely with your location history and your personal information that the telco has on file. That analysis is much less preventable, short of not using mobile telcos. This sort of thing really should be opt-in--otherwise, the by-product (personal data) will become the business, and the mobile service will move towards being merely a means to that end.
mjn 13y ago
Even with a VPN, there's quite a bit of data-mining that can be done just by looking at the total traffic, ignoring destinations. An interested ISP could probably still guess when you're watching streaming video, when people in your household typically wake up, sleep, and leave for work, etc. You could make that harder by padding the link with dummy traffic, though, like some darknet software does. That'd probably work, especially if we assume the ISP is just doing aggregate data-mining on usage data, not targeting you specifically and willing to spend much time de-obfuscating your obfuscation scheme. But it might be expensive to be pumping dummy data 24/7 if your VPN or home connection has traffic limits or bills by the GB. Something similar is a concern with power companies as well. Even though electric meters only record total usage (kW being used by the apartment, not tagged with what it's being used for), the move to smart meters that record power usage frequently has led to some concern, because you can do all kinds of analysis just from the raw electric-usage data. Different devices/appliances tend to have noticeable signatures, so an interested power company can tell when the washing machine goes on, when the TV is in use, arrive at good guesses of your sleeping and cooking patterns, etc.
- timthorn 13y ago
  Not just when the TV is on, but also which programme is on TV.
- eli 13y ago
  Indeed, my power company shows a chart of which of my appliances use the most power, deduced from their usage patterns.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

timthorn 13y ago

This is unrelated to IP - the telcos are looking at mobile phone position, even for simple voice phones. They argue that they aren't violating privacy as data is only provided in aggregate for eg postal districts, but that's only their position.

Retric 13y ago
This can in theory be used for good things. Take Say a random 1% of the population each day and track there position and you can get vary good data on where traffic problems are. And not just where accidents are but also where people slow down which can be a sign of a pothole or something in the road etc. Granted there are huge privacy issues with this, however if you could track most cars you would get much better idea how to change traffic lights / patterns based on time of day and day of year. Because, small issues tend to propagate all over the place so small and cheap changes can make a rather large difference.
- nraynaud 13y ago
  The projects I was involved with were more about appraising the value of a shop's position, the value of billboards, and also some time and space related thing (like "where do the people passing in front of my shop sleep?" and "what's the peak in my street?", "how many out-of-area people pass in front of my shop?"). But it's true that I also know of one project that uses phone data to check highway traffic congestion (A6 in Provence, France). It's also ad-related, because the data is sold to media companies whose major income is form advertisement.
discostrings 13y ago
My initial thoughts were about combining web browsing history and internet usage with location information, but you're right--a lot of analysis could be done purely with your location history and your personal information that the telco has on file. That analysis is much less preventable, short of not using mobile telcos. This sort of thing really should be opt-in--otherwise, the by-product (personal data) will become the business, and the mobile service will move towards being merely a means to that end.

mjn 13y ago

Even with a VPN, there's quite a bit of data-mining that can be done just by looking at the total traffic, ignoring destinations. An interested ISP could probably still guess when you're watching streaming video, when people in your household typically wake up, sleep, and leave for work, etc. You could make that harder by padding the link with dummy traffic, though, like some darknet software does. That'd probably work, especially if we assume the ISP is just doing aggregate data-mining on usage data, not targeting you specifically and willing to spend much time de-obfuscating your obfuscation scheme. But it might be expensive to be pumping dummy data 24/7 if your VPN or home connection has traffic limits or bills by the GB. Something similar is a concern with power companies as well. Even though electric meters only record total usage (kW being used by the apartment, not tagged with what it's being used for), the move to smart meters that record power usage frequently has led to some concern, because you can do all kinds of analysis just from the raw electric-usage data. Different devices/appliances tend to have noticeable signatures, so an interested power company can tell when the washing machine goes on, when the TV is in use, arrive at good guesses of your sleeping and cooking patterns, etc.

timthorn 13y ago
Not just when the TV is on, but also which programme is on TV.
eli 13y ago
Indeed, my power company shows a chart of which of my appliances use the most power, deduced from their usage patterns.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]