By Dan Morrill
Expert Author
Article Date: 2008-06-06
Earlier this month I talked about a program called antiphorm, which was designed to simulate a user casually surfing the internet.
This video goes into how the program works, and some customization routines that will pollute the data stream that the ISP's will in turn sell to marketing folks.
This is a general privacy issue; phorm is a software package that builds a profile of surfing habits, which an ISP that uses phorm can in turn sell to a company to make some money. The demonstratable problem is that is it really quite easy to stake surfing data or even search data and take it right back to the person who was doing the search or on the internet.
In working with the software, it actually ended up working quite well, you might have to download directX 10 from Microsoft if it is not already installed. Otherwise the installation and use of the program is very easy for just about anyone to use.
For those who are worried about being profiled by an ISP, this is the one program you want to download because nothing is more annoying to anyone than corrupt or invalid data. If you suddenly start getting a pile of offers for stuff you will never use based on the antiphormlite database, then you know for sure that your ISP is monitoring what you do, where you go, and then selling that information to marketing folks.
Comments About the Author:
Dan Morrill has been in the information security field for 18 years, both
civilian and military, and is currently working on his Doctor of Management.
Dan shares his insights on the important security issues of today through
his blog, Managing
Intellectual Property & IT Security, and is an active participant in the
ITtoolbox blogging community.
