Comcast, AT&T and Verizon pose a greater surveillance risk than Facebook

Re:Comcast, AT&T and Verizon pose a greater surveillance ris... by ballenf on Friday April 06, 2018 @02:30PM (#16775959)

I think you're encrypted argument is falling prey to the common fallacy of "it's only metadata". Knowing when you interact with which sites is more important than 90% of what you're doing on those sites, in terms of profiling you and monetizing you with data brokers.

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Re:Comcast, AT&T and Verizon pose a greater surveillance ris... by jstarfish on Friday April 06, 2018 @03:01PM (#16776305)

The irony is that with more and more sites wanting to be "portals", more traffic is centralized within a single domain and none of the lateral movements are visible to the ISP.

Then: You go to foxnews.com, then you go to pornhub.com. Based on hostnames we can make some inferences about you and your behaviors.

Now: You go to reddit.com(/thedonald), then you go to reddit.com(/twerkinggifs). Thanks to HTTPS, the specific subs you're visiting aren't visible to the ISP; all they can see is you going to reddit a bunch of times.

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Re:Comcast, AT&T and Verizon pose a greater surveillance ris... by jacquesm on Friday April 06, 2018 @02:34PM (#16776000)

Yes, but it is far harder for my ISP do monetize that data than it is for the two largest ad networks on the planet.

My ISP is welcome to know what sites I connect to because I pay them to do exactly that. Facebook and Google inserting their riders everywhere I go is not part of something I consent to.

And that's the root of the problem, if I send an envelope with my return address on the back the postal services have access to the meta-data and it is my decision to let them.

But it is not my decision to let a bunch of unrelated third parties use the contents of the letters to build up profiles on me and my counterparty.

[ Parent | on HN ]