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Maintaining online privacy, security and anonymity.

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IainB:
@mwb1100: Many thanks for the tips.   :Thmbsup:
That mvps.org looks very interesting. It also gave me an idea for making greater use of the 127.0.0.1 proxy... Time to experiment, methinks.

IainB:
Interesting comment about the possibility that ISPs might enter the fray to secure themselves toll gate revenue for allowing advertising to pass through "their" networks. That could potentially disrupt things in ways we might not have expected.
Network users already pay a fee to their ISP for their access to and use of the (TCIP) network provided by the ISPs - i.e., users effectively unwittingly pay to be sitting ducks for advertising - regardless of whether they use ad-blocking.
So, if ISPs started to charge advertisers a toll fee for delivering advertising into the network, then would that mean that the toll revenue would defray the network costs to the users?    :tellme:
Enquiring minds need to know.
If it did, and if such a new pricing regime were introduced, then I for one might at least consider disabling my ad-blocking. I mean, why not? I'd be getting paid for being obliged to look at ads. Whether I would want to, or not, is a different matter.
Conversely, if such a new pricing regime were introduced, then I might elect to keep paying my ISP just to not have the advertising feed. "User pays", as now. That way, the ISP would earn his revenue either way.
That could get very messy. Thinking about it, there could be lots of room for unintended consequences in this.
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)
September 30, 2015
How ISPs Will Royally Sucker the Internet, Thanks to Ad Blocking

Largely lost in the current controversies about users blocking ads from websites is a dirty little secret -- users are about to be played for suckers by the dominant ISPs around the world, and ad blocking will be the "camel's nose under the tent" that makes these ISPs' ultimate wet dreams of total control over Internet content come true at last.

There have been a number of clues already, with one particularly notable new one today.

The big red flashing warning light is the fact that in some cases it's possible for firms to buy their way past ad blockers -- proving demonstrably that what's really going on is that these ad blocking firms want a piece of the advertising pie -- while all the time they wax poetic propaganda about how much they hate -- simply hate! -- all those ads.

But these guys are just clowns compared to the big boys -- the dominant ISPs around the world.

And those ISPs have for so very long wanted their slices of that same pie. They want the money coming, going, in and out -- as SBC's CEO Edward Whitacre noted back in 2005 during their takeover of AT&T, when he famously asked "Why should [Internet sites] be allowed to use [my] pipes for free?" -- conveniently ignoring the fact that his subscribers were already paying him for Internet access to websites.

Now -- today -- ISPs sense that it's finally time to plunge their fangs into the Net's jugular, to really get the blood gushing out into deep scarlet pools of money.

Mobile operator Digicel announced today that they intend to block advertising (except for some local advertisers) on their networks across the South Pacific and Caribbean, unless -- you guessed it -- websites pay them to let their ads through.

And while their claimed targets are Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and the other major players, you know that it will never stop there, and ultimately millions of small businesses and other small websites -- many of them one person operations, often not even commercial -- who depend on those ads will be decimated.

Germany's Deutsche Telekom is known to have been "toying" with the same concept, and you can be sure that many other ISPs are as well. They're not interested in "protecting" users from ads -- they're all about control and extorting money from both sides of the game -- their subscribers and the sites those subscribers need to access.

Where this all likely leads is unfortunately very clear. No crystal ball required.

Some sites will block ISPs who try this game. Broad use of SSL will limit some of these ISPs' more rudimentary efforts to manipulate the data flows between sites and subscribers. Technology will advance quickly to move ads "inline" to content servers, making them much more difficult to effectively block.

But right now, firms such as Israeli startup Shine Technologies are moving aggressively to promote carrier level blocking systems to feed ISP greed.

Yet this isn't the worst of it. Because once ISPs have a taste of the control, power, and money - money - money that comes with micromanagement of their subscribers' Internet access and usage, the next step is obvious, especially in countries where strong net neutrality protections are not in place or are at risk of being repealed with the next administration.

Perhaps you remember a joke ad that was floating around some years ago, showing a purported price list for a future ISP -- with different prices depending on which Internet sites you wanted to access. Pay X dollars more a month to your ISP if you want to be permitted to reach Google. Pay Y dollars more a month for Facebook access. Another Z dollars a month for permission from your ISP to connect to Netflix. And so on.

It seemed pretty funny at the time.

It's not so funny now -- because it's the next logical step after ISP attempts at ad blocking. And in fact, blocking entire sites is technically usually far easier than trying to only block ads related to particular sites -- most users won't know about workarounds like proxies and VPNs, and the ISPs can try block those as well.

These are the kinds of nightmarish outcomes we can look forward to as a consequence of tampering with the Internet's original end-to-end model, especially at the ISP level.

It's a road to even more riches for the dominant ISPs, ever higher prices for their subscribers, and the ruin of vast numbers of websites, especially smaller ones with limited income sources.

It's the path to an Internet that closely resembles the vast wasteland that is cable TV today. And it's no coincidence that the dominant ISPs, frantic over fears of their control being subverted by so-called cable TV "cord cutters" moving to the Internet alone, now hope to remake the Internet itself in the image of cable TV's most hideous, anti-consumer attributes.

Nope, you don't need a Tarot deck or a Ouija board to see the future of the Internet these days, if the current patterns remain on their present course.

Whether or not our Internet actually remains on this grievous path, is of course ultimately in our hands.

But are we up to the challenge? Or are we suckers, after all?

--Lauren--
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so.
All opinions expressed here are mine alone.

--- End quote ---

Stoic Joker:
It's the path to an Internet that closely resembles the vast wasteland that is cable TV today. And it's no coincidence that the dominant ISPs, frantic over fears of their control being subverted by so-called cable TV "cord cutters" moving to the Internet alone, now hope to remake the Internet itself in the image of cable TV's most hideous, anti-consumer attributes.-IainB (October 01, 2015, 03:06 PM)
--- End quote ---

Well that sounds completely horrifying to me.

IainB:
^^ Absolutely, and I reckoned it sounded pretty horrifying too, but it was just someone's prediction, so I didn't let it worry me.
Things rarely work out as predicted, and it would be absurd to think we could predict the future, though some have tried with varying degrees of success - e.g., science fiction writers, one good example being the view of a possible future totalitarian state in the book "1984" by George Orwell (which seems to have been used by some governments as an instruction manual). Incidentally, there was an echo of that book in the BBC's rather good TV drama series about UK society under totalitarian state rule in "1990" (some of which which eerily seems to be coming to pass or may have already passed).

IainB:
Quite coincidentally, I saw this in my bazqux fee-reader this morning. Looks like a pretty accurate analysis of some of the main problems/issues: Ad Blockers and the Nuisance at the Heart of the Modern Web - The New York Times
...
_______________________
-IainB (August 19, 2015, 05:04 PM)
--- End quote ---

The article at the link would seem to be based on what is arguably a not unreasonable assumption that the existing de facto business models used by ISPs and advertisers will likely continue and/or be reinforced by anticipated potential changes in a pricing regime, and that the ISPs would intend to plan for that because it will be easy "money for nothing" (i.e., they will not have not added any value/service).
However, the art of the possible might have already thwarted such possible plans, by demonstrating that there are alternative business models and pricing regimes that could come into play. This point struck home to me when I posted the comment LINE - the txt chat/audiocall/videocall friend contacts VoIP you always needed?

If you read the Wikipedia info - Line (application) - Wikipeda - you will see that LINE was created as an emergency response to replace a crippled telecommunications infrastructure after the Japanese earthquakes and tsunami in 2011. As such, there would have been little or no thought given to making revenue from it at the time. However, by offering it as a free service to the public, and then getting it subsidised by advertising revenue and with an emphasis on the needs of the user as a user, it has a business model that would seem to be quite different to the de facto business model of other "social networks" where the user is a tool whose demographic data is intentionally collected, copyrighted and then sold as such (monetised).
LINE would seem to be a disruptive technology and a potential existential threat to the business models of the market status quo.

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