UK ISPs to spy on all web traffic to your home (if you let them get away with it)

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

If you’re a BT Broadband customer, watch out! The company intends to track the websites visited by 10,000 customers (eventually all of them) and hit them with targeted ads. This is to secure extra revenue, of course. Virgin Media and the (always dubious) Carphone Warehouse will be getting their act together later in the year to pull the same trick, which may be illegal under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). One expert believes it will only be legal is if ISPs obtain prior consent from the users they want to spy on.

Can we spam you with advertising, Sir, and in the process find out every single website you visit, day and night, every article you read, every picture you look at, every item you download? Oh, yes please, do sign me up! I don’t think so. You don’t have to be doing anything dodgy online not to want a multinational corporation looking over your shoulder all of the time. If we wanted to be eyeballed, we’d have CCTV in every room and pipe the feed to our local police stations, MPs and anyone who fancied a peep at whatever we’re doing at any time.

Is anyone daft enough to say yes? Probably not, which is why this twisted initiative will be undertaken under an assumed opt-in rather than by asking people first. BT says that the ad targeting can be switched off easily, but plans to pressgang BT Broadband users when the full system goes live in the fourth quarter of 2008. But even if you think the idea of being able to opt-out is reassuring, think again—the way the opt-out will work means the contents of websites you visit will still be mirrored to the new system. Profiler hardware will just not categorise pages or try to serve up ads. This means the traffic to your computer will still be intercepted, and therefore still likely to be in breach of the RIPA.

It also means all customers of BT Broadband, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media will shortly be spied upon 24-7 whether they find the opt-out page and say no to this outrageous behaviour or not.

As and when the changes are implemented, our household will be leaving BT irrespective of the fact that our contract is for 18 months, with only two months behind us right now. We didn’t sign up for this. Nobody did. Just let them try to stop us leaving. My suspicion is that this system will lead to a mass exodus of those customers who know their rights and why this is so important a thing to defend ourselves against. It may even land BT and the other two ISPs in court for breaking the law.

Make sure everybody knows what’s coming. Me, I’m going to be writing to BT this week, stating my position, making clear I will leave, and I urge others to do the same.

categories: all wired up