ISPs Give ‘Netflow Data’ To Third Parties, Who Sell It While not User Awareness Or Consent – Techdirt

from the more-of-the-same dept

Back encompassing 2007 or so there was a ruckus when broadband ISPs were found to be disposing of your “clickstream” data (which sites you visit the actual long you’re there) to every nitwit with a nickel, simply basically denying they were even expert that . Concerns about that now seem quaint.

In the years as, technologies like deep pack inspection have allowed ISPs to collect and sell details on every facets of your online life, then, thru obfuscation, proxies, and empty provides of “anonymization, ” insist they’re not doing possibilities that . Or, with the mobile industry’s location data scams have shown , collect and then sell on your daily movement habits, to begin with with only a fleeting situation about user privacy & security.

At last, sources in the infosec luxurious deduce Motherboard ISPs are also (again, via proxies) selling access to “netflow facts. ” As the name means, netflow data details the time to day broader stroke multilevel traffic (pdf), whether that’s overall connections loads, which servers may be talking to one another, network topology, etc . The data is generally fantastic researchers to understand network as user behavior, and to home surveillance experts to help mitigate web attacks. But it’s also superior, and increasingly, it’s for being offloaded to businesses which have been then turning around and as a result selling it:

“I’m apprehensive that netflow data offered for commercial purposes is usually path to a dark willy place, ” one source familiar with the data told Board (umgangssprachlich). Motherboard granted multiple causes anonymity to speak more candidly about industry issues. inches

Recall that modest FCC broadband privacy rules created give users a little more openness into this stuff were killed throughout the GOP in 2017 (using the Congressional Review Act at phone system industry behest) before they can even take effect. And furthermore recall that, thanks to some cross-industry coalition of lobbyists, the United States still doesn’t have a basic privacy law for the internet era. As a result, any destroy of data that can be collected associated with sold is, securing your data is often an better thoughts, and consumers more often than not provide absolutely no transparency into anything.

The data brings us comprehensive insight into not just specifically happening on the originating ISPs network, but everybody’s network , contain what data is being forced through VPNs. ISPs offload this data to safety vendors in exchange for welfare threat analysis work. The same vendors then turn around with act as data brokers, sharing access to this data using wide variety of third parties… without end-user awareness or consent. ISPs then can tell reporters “we don’t sell access to rider data” because, technically, in which aren’t directly “selling” the program:

“The continued sale of sensitive computer data could present its own anonymity and security concerns, along with the news highlights that ISPs really are providing this data inside the scale to third parties quite likely without the informed consent of their own users.

“The users almost certainly generally [know]” specific data is being provided across Team Cymru, who finally sells access to it, which are familiar with the data said.

Yet again, there’s always a lot of hand-wringing by the potential impossibility of personal privacy legislation given the potential for deterioration. But it remains entirely possible in order to craft comprehensive, basic federativo rules that, at the very least, subpoena absolute transparency with the user. Instead of doing what coming from created with a wild western side like ecosystem of application makers, phone makers, routine giants, telecoms and others trading every shred of data possible find, often failing in which to adequately secure it, there is consumer protection (or especially awareness) a distant, belated afterthought.

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Registered Under: broadband , clickstream data , fcc , isps , netflow data , seclusion

Source of this news: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210824/07122747419/isps-give-netflow-data-to-third-parties-who-sell-it-without-user-awareness-consent.shtml