UK info commissioner probes TalkTalk
p2pnet view Freedom | P2P:- p2pnet has been pretty much alone in suggesting any actions UK ISP TalkTalk purportedly takes to ‘protect’ customers are PR window dressing.
Now “The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has confirmed it is looking into the process that TalkTalk uses to monitor the web addresses that its customers are using”, says eWeek.
TalkTalk ISP talks itself up as a Noble Defender of the Great Online Unwashed, we said recently, going on, “But p2pnet wonders if it it and its boss, Charles Dunstone (right), are just that. Talk.
“Now it’s been caught flat-footed — or should that be red-handed? — monitoring users without their knowledge or consent.
“Company communications director Mark Schmid admits since July, it’s been ‘generating a list of websites which are being connected to across our network, and then scanning those sites for potential malware’, says the Telegraph.
“Doesn’t that mean it’s been poking around behind doors which should have been firmly closed to it?
“ ‘We are not connecting people’s personal IP address … to each website visited,’ says Schmid. He doesn’t explain how that justifies TalkTalk’s secret data collections.”
TalkTalk eventually had to admit it’d been monitoring customers, “but said that it was a necessary part of the testing process for a new anti-malware system it is developing”, says eWeek, adding:
“The system is provided by Chinese vendor Huawei, and is due to be launched before the end of 2010.
“As TalkTalk customers browse the web, the TalkTalk anti-malware system records all the URLs they visit and checks them against a blacklist of sites known to be infected with malware. It also has a ‘whitelist’ of sites that have been scanned for threats and approved.”
Blacklisting — nothing new to TalkTalk
Below is an excerpt from a post I ran in April >>>
“After the election we will resume highlighting the substantial dangers inherent in the proposals and that the hoped for benefits in legitimate sales will not materialise as filesharers will simply switch to other undetectable methods to get content for free”, says TalkTalk strategist Healey, adding:
“In the meantime we stand by our pledges to our customers: “Unless we are served with a court order [our emphasis] we will never surrender a customer’s details to rightsholders. We are the only major ISP to have taken this stance and we will maintain it.
“If we are instructed to disconnect an account due to alleged copyright infringement we will refuse to do so and tell the rightsholders we’ll see them in court.”
Looks good.
Except for two items the mainstream (and other) media always fail to mention.
1) Parental ‘controls’ >>>
“Parents choosing the [TallTalk] U or 14 options would block every PC in the household from accessing file-sharing sites such as the Pirate Bay, as well as pornography and gambling, without the need for extra software on the computer itself, within our network …”
… the Financial Times had TalkTalk boss Charlie Dunstone (right) promising last year; and,
2) TalkTalk BitTorrent blacklist >>>
This [the parent control system] is something that we are going to do anyway, as a service to our customers.
But through doing it we can also help the content industry by blacklisting sites that have BitTorrent … files on them [our emphasis].
Blacklist BT sites?
That’s entertainment cartel-style censorship of the type the Oz government hopes to run via an online ‘filter’ operation, also based on a blacklist.
‘Bad publicity, time wasting, copyright violation’
TalkTalk also has a ’service’ it openly calls Web Content Filtering.
Here’s what it says >>>
[...] allowing your users unrestricted Internet access can result in serious financial, legal and social consequences. Bad publicity, time wasting, copyright violation as a result of music downloads, the viewing of explicit content and co-worker complaints are all problems that can occur unless controls are put in place.
Allowing customers free, untramelled use of the service, for which they pay good money?
Oh! The Horror!
TalkTalk goes on >>>
Despite the obvious pitfalls many organisations are fearful of the complexity and cost of solutions that filter Internet content.
But not TalkTalk. Because it says it has “the answer”, the TalkTalk ‘Internet web filtering service’ which is “one of the most effective, affordable and easy-to-use solution available today, complete with >>>
Dynamic Control List – Internet access is managed through the dynamic Control List, a database of many millions of Web sites organized into different categories for flexible policy enforcement options including security (spyware, malware, P2P), confidentiality (chat, IM), and bandwidth management (Internet radio/TV, streaming media).
Dynamic control is, of course, a euphemism for censorship.
Meanwhile, “Reporting is a key part of any Web filtering solution” and, “With Talk Internet’s web filtering service, you can quickly understand how your companies internet access and monitor inappropriate Web activity”, it says, stressing >>>
Control – Deny All – Only allows access to a list of websites that have been provided by yourself. You can add and delete sites on-line to extend or reduce the list. Except All – If you need full Internet access but require restrictions on certain Websites, we can provide a restriction service based on a set of keywords that you provide. For example to reduce access to sites containing the word ’sex’ you would add this to your list. You can add or delete words on-line to extend or reduce your list.
Features:
Simple web based management to set your access policies.
Industry standard control lists.
Keyword based content filtering.
Detailed reporting of internet usage.
“TalkTalk?” – I added. “No thanks.”
Stay tuned.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
(Cheers, Marc)
http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/15184860.rss
PR window dressing – TalkTalk double-speak?, October 29, 2009
eWeek – ICO Confirms TalkTalk Probe Over Customer Snooping, September 6, 2010
Noble Defender – TalkTalk admits secretly monitoring users, July 29, 2010
Telegraph – Customer outrage over TalkTalk monitoring web use, July 29, 2010
excerpt – TalkTalk BitTorrent censoring ’solution’, April 12, 2010
always fail to mention- TalkTalk: fighting the Three Strikes bill, January 29, 2010
Financial Times – Age ratings plan to fight internet piracy, September 25, 2010
online ‘filter’ operation- Oz Pirate Party helps seniors bypass net ‘filter’, April 9, 2010
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