PDA

View Full Version : Virgin Media Tracking and Selling our Surfing


melevittfl
19-02-2008, 11:11
The International Herald Tribune is reporting that Virgin Media, and other ISPs, are going to start saving the website URLs that customers visit and selling them to a third party advertising network. The article is here: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/15/business/AD18.php

According to the article customer will be able to "opt out", but it's not clear how we will be able to verify that, or what the procedure will be.

The danger is that, even though they claim to protect your anonymity, you will NOT be anonymous. Your data will be assigned a number instead of a name, but that WILL NOT protect you.

If you look at all the URLs that one person visits, it will not be hard to get clues as to their identity. Search for things in your town? Visit a website where your username is part of the URL (Like del.icio.us), etc.

AOL accidently did something similar in 2006 and it was trivial for people to discover the identities of their users, even though they had assigned users to a number: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I hope the opt-out step is easy and permanent, and that we can verify it ourselves. If anyone finds out any information, please let us know.

dilli-theclaw
19-02-2008, 11:14
Already being discussed here

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33628733-virgin-media-ad-deal-would-you.html

Thread closed.