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22 June 2007
Eleven years ago, when I started on the net, the worse form of invasion was cookies. How dare they track how you got to their site - how often you visit - what time and how many pages you viewed - how dare they? I still don't like cookies, but the invasion of privacy has gotten far worse and far less easy to detect. A week ago I found out just how bad it can get. I noticed something odd in my domain logs. I was showing in my logs as coming from adzilla.com. That isn't my ISP. I had never heard of Adzilla, so I looked them up. What I found is disturbing. Adzilla has a server add-on called ZILLAcasting. An ISP puts this on their server and sets it up to track their customers. Then, Adzilla pays the ISP for the information it collects - personal info, location, surfing habits - the more information the ISP collects, the more money they get from Adzilla. The proclaimed purpose is to deliver more relevant advertising to the user. The more they know about a user, the better targeted the advertising. Companies pay Adzilla, because they know their ads will be seen by users in a certain area, or by users with a certain interest, because they've tracked the users and know where and what they are looking at on the net. Sound too creepy to be true? From Adzilla's own website: What is the revenue opportunity?From ISPortal: The ZILLAcaster technology resides within the service provider's network, the closest point to the subscriber, and utilizes network data in combination with contextual and behavioral targeting to make decisions regarding the delivery of the most relevant ad content for network users.Where's the outcry? There are no webpages I could find declaring this the worst offense to privacy ever. Even the supposed 'privacy' websites have no mention of this new and unbelievable abuse. Most references simply describe the Adzilla system. I realized why no one is upset. They probably don't even know their ISP is using it. ZILLAcasting runs as a transparent proxy. I never would have known my ISP had it, had I not noticed my log reference. Without using a proxy detector, many users don't know they're being tracked. Wonder if you're on the ZILLAcasting system? If your ISP is in any of these areas, there's a chance you are: SAN DIEGOHere are a couple of links you can use to check: I have asked my ISP to take me off the ZILLAcasting system. So far, they have not complied, even though the Adzilla sites says any user can opt-out. The longer this type of privacy invasion is allowed, the more acceptable it will become.
06/29/07
08/02/07 Continental VisinetThe ISP's listed above use the Coretel lines. Coretel controls those lines and they are the ones who have put the tracking proxy in place. They are the ones making money for the information they collect on all the other ISP's users. Are they making money by tracking you? Test your connection for a proxy
The tests above will show you as having a Coretel IP, however, the 208.103.xxx.xxx range of IP's are Adzilla IP's. If your dialer shows your IP address, and it is within this range, you are running through the Adzilla spying software. Instead of going through a proxy to the Adzilla server, you are on the Adzilla equipped server.
Proxy: DETECTED
IP address: 208.103.143.6
IP address: 208.103.146.235
© Simon
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'NetRants' © Simon