Released: August 21, 2008

New internet tool raises deep privacy concerns

Source: Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post (Free Registration)

If you’re reading this story on our Web site, I don’t know what you did online before you reached this page. But your Internet provider might if it engages in something called deep packet inspection.

That phrase may sound like what the Transportation Security Administration does to uncooperative airline passengers, but on the Internet it means a thorough and automatic inspection of online traffic—not just where you’ve been but also what you’ve seen.

Peering inside the digital packets of data zipping across the Internet—in real time, for tens of thousands of users at once—was commercially impractical until recently. But the ceaseless march of processing power has made it feasible.

Unsurprisingly, companies have been trying to turn this potential into profit. By tracking users’ Web habits this closely, they can gain a much more detailed picture of their interests—and then display precisely targeted, premium-priced ads.

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