Results tagged “isp” from Birmingham Mail - Technobabble

Unions and businesses from the creative industries called for Government action today to require internet service providers (ISPs) to issue sanctions against customers who repeatedly download illegal content.

The London conference, called the Future of the Creative Economy, was led jointly by the UK Film Council and the Federation of Entertainment Unions, and hosted by Bafta.

It culminated in the launch of a set of recommendations to Government on a system for tackling the "damage" caused to the UK economy by illegal file-sharing.

The coalition called for the Government to require ISPs to use their direct relationship with their consumers to send notices to those customers who illegally file share and to introduce sanctions for those who ignore such notices and repeatedly download illegal content.

The recommendations included the statement: "We support early indications of Government's thinking that call on ISPs to send warning notices to offenders as a first stage of tackling the problem.

"We strongly recommend an additional option whereby, where multiple educational warnings are ignored by consumers, a graduated series of technical solutions are used which prevent further illegal activity, with a clear appeals process in place to protect consumers."

The law is currently still being formed on computer privacy.

Currently the internet resembles something like the 'wild west' with a fairly lawless frontier environment.

In most cases laws actually exist but few resources are dedicated towards enforcing them and protecting people - not least because there are no real borders online, so enforcing locally held laws is incredibly complex and difficult.

In my opinion one of the areas which certainly needs more attention is that of the 'tracking' programmes which seemingly get downloaded with great frequency, often contained in cookies.

I was interested to read the latest issue of Computing Which? recently which took a look at internet search engines and the information they keep.

The thrust of the article was about how to protect your own information from use or exploitation by third parties.

This doesn't just amount to keeping secret passwords and so on - but also, for some people, it is important that their habits aren't used by third parties for personal gain.

Some people don't want to be recognised when they log onto the net, and have 'targeted' advertising thrust at them as a result.

One thing which was surprising was how much information the search engines keep.

Google, for example allows third parties to see which ads people clicked on. Yahoo and msn go slightly further to allow advertisers to track ads you click on across various sites.

All keep a record of searches undertaken, with most allowing law enforcement officials access as necessary.

I don't suppose I personally have a major problem with any of the above, although keeping the search data would allow third parties to see exactly who you are, if for example they can utilise usernames you use on sites, search for your own name and so on.

So if the information gets leaked or into the wrong hands, then your bank accounts etc could be at risk.

Which? also posted a list of ten top tips to protect your information which I'll boil down here:

1: Delete cookies regularly from your browser.

2: If you have an account with google mail, yahoo mail or hotmail don't do searches while logged in to these accounts. Results will be directly linked to your account. Also don't search using your isp's home page - AOL released the data from 650,000 users in 2006 for a research project which was leaked, each used was identified by a number and the searches could be used to find out who they were.

3: Make sure any social networking sites you use have the privacy settings turned on.

4: Don't enter information such as your National Insurance number of mother's maiden name into searches.

5: Consider using anonymising software eg www.anonymiser.com

6: Don't use the same username for every website.

7: Never post phone numbers or email addresses in forums.

8: Check if you've got a static IP address.

9: Always read a site's privacy policy to find out what happens to the data.

10: For more information visit the information commissioner's office at www.ico.gov.uk