Study Confirms ISPs Meddle With Web Traffic

And you thought you enjoyed your privacy, read what they have to say about your ISP and your browsing habits:

Last July, a research team from the University of Washington released an online tool to analyze whether web pages were being altered during the transit from web server to user. On Wednesday, the team released a paper at the Usenix conference analyzing the data collected from the tool. The found, unsurprisingly, that ISPs were indeed injecting ads into web pages viewed by a small number of users. The paper is available at the Usenix site. From PCWorld: “To get their data, the team wrote software that would test whether or not someone visiting a test page on the University of Washington’s Web site was viewing HTML that had been altered in transit. In 16 instances ads were injected into the Web page by the visitor’s Internet Service provider. The service providers named by the researchers are generally small ISPs such as RedMoon, Mesa Networks and MetroFi, but the paper also named one of the largest ISPs in the U.S., XO Communications, as an ad injector.”

So you see, you are being watched…

Popularity: 43% [?]

[Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon]

About the Author

Martin

Member of the GAWDs and Web Standards Group. As a member of the Web Standards Group, as well as membership in the Guild of Accessible Web Designers, I strive to achieve maximum website accessibility in my designs, while using the latest, cutting-edge eXtensible HyperText Mark-up Language/CSS markup. My sites fully validate with the W3C standards for XHTML/CSS, as well as comply with the W3C's WAI - A, AA, or AAA standards. Separation of Content from presentation and a site that fully complies with this philosophy - will reach more than just your intended audience, it'll reach everyone! Web standards at FierceStreet Networks is all about usability - XHTML for content, and CSS for presentation.

Leave a Reply

Please copy the string 7MTQek to the field below:

You can use these XHTML tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <strong>