Paying not to be Spied On

Generali

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/02/att_charging_cu.html

https://gigaom.com/2015/02/19/dont-let-att-mislead-you-about-its-29-privacy-fee/

Your ISP is in a unique position when it comes to your websurfing habits. They know pretty much everything you do: illegal downloads, who you bank with, the 'one-handed websites' you visit. AT&T have traditionally sold that information on to 3rd party advertisers who can in turn then try to sell you whatever depraved filth it is that you are into. (I bet they're not the only ones - TalkTalk used to do it).

Anyhoo, now AT&T have an offer: pay an extra $44-66 and they will (probably) stop harvesting your data! Lovely.

buglawton

Is this relevant to the UK?

Generali

buglawton wrote: »

Is this relevant to the UK?

That depends on whether you think that invasions of privacy stop on the Western side of the Atlantic or not.

PasturesNew

I think the fat belly adverts will follow me around no matter what I do/pay

padington

Generali wrote: »

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/02/att_charging_cu.html

https://gigaom.com/2015/02/19/dont-let-att-mislead-you-about-its-29-privacy-fee/

Your ISP is in a unique position when it comes to your websurfing habits. They know pretty much everything you do: illegal downloads, who you bank with, the 'one-handed websites' you visit. AT&T have traditionally sold that information on to 3rd party advertisers who can in turn then try to sell you whatever depraved filth it is that you are into. (I bet they're not the only ones - TalkTalk used to do it).

Anyhoo, now AT&T have an offer: pay an extra $44-66 and they will (probably) stop harvesting your data! Lovely.

I don't do it myself but can't you use a proxy website like the kids do in China ?

Generali

padington wrote: »

I don't do it myself but can't you use a proxy website like the kids do in China ?

Presumably it all still goes through the ISP as someone has to connect you to the interwebs one way or another. The only way to get around it would be to send information that was already encrypted.

IronWolf

Or use a VPN. Or if even that's too much trouble get Tor browser.

wotsthat

If I was a spy the first people I'd spy on would be those who had paid a fee not to be spied on.

Generali

IronWolf wrote: »

Or use a VPN. Or if even that's too much trouble get Tor browser.

Presumably with a VPN you still need an ISP to connect...?

IronWolf

Generali wrote: »

Presumably with a VPN you still need an ISP to connect...?

Yes, and they will see you are connected to a VPN. Not very informative though.

Loughton_Monkey

I find these spies very irritating.

It ruined my Christmas the other year. Mrs LM bought me some new bar stools, not realising that because she bought them on the Internet, just about every Internet page loaded on any of the 4 computers in the house, have little adverts showing the very same bar stools.....

Any respectable member of society like yours' truly would never use 'one-handed websites' [Gen's euphemism] anyway. But if I did. an advert for such a site would be on Mrs LM's computer before you could say "Mine's a large one...."

I thought Norton Internet Security was supposed to protect me from these things but they don't. They probably get a commission. Shady tactics are not a stranger to Norton either. When my annual subscription is close to renewal, I get a noticeably high number of 'Attack' messages [obviously sent by Norton] with very visible messages congratulating Norton for saving me. Their other tactic is to encourage me strongly to press their "Renew" button for another year, to charge some rip-off amount.

I can buy a brand new subscription from Amazon for half what Norton want, after which, ironically, all my computers advertise Norton Internet Security all over the place.

At least UK is not like China. Over there, if I wanted to do Internet banking (on a UK site) then I would have to attempt to load the page when I got home from work (say 8 p.m.). After dinner, perhaps at 10 p.m., the page would load, having been in the very long queue for the 30,000 Chinese Internet Police.