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Old 20-02-2008, 16:37   #155
brundles
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Berkshire
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob View Post
How would an IP change / proxy guarantee your privacy. Who is to say that the details your ISP is giving away are not linked to the mac address of your modem

We really haven't got enough information on how the system uploads information on your browsing habits. I'd suggest it has to be something at ISP network level, if the ISPs are required to sign up. That negates anything at your own computer level, except for blocking the final advert displays.
Something like that is an interesting point. If they were basing the logging and ad serving on IP address then wouldn't that open the way for you to get ads targetted at someone else after a few modem reboots? Not good if that someone else had unsavory habits and choices of web pages.

Another worry is the performance impact. The network is slow enough already in places - now they're adding in a constant stream of bandwidth to Phorm as a requirement. Best case is that Phorm just get a batch of data once a week/day and the realtime bandwidth is limited to "ad for customer 1234 please" and the advert coming back. Worst case is VM sending the full profile every time if they keep the data.

The PageSense links above are a real worry - while NoScript is a damn good plugin, certain trusted websites (e.g. my bank!) still use them and have been whitelisted. Essentially this means that PageSense is able to grab sensitive information on the very sites you don't want them to have data from. I like the idea of the domain blocking (might be time to add that on to my router!) but all that would take is for the communication to be IP based rather than domain based to work around it.

Edit: Thinking about it, GreaseMonkey may also be of some use here - you could then write a script to specifically rip out any PageSense script in the page coming through so that even whitelisted pages are still safe.
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