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Old 2012-09-04, 21:01   Link #1
TigerII
Pilot in Training
 
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Earth
'Most File-Shares are monitored' says Birmingham University

"The research identified about 10 different monitoring firms logging content. Of these, a handful were identifiable as copyright-enforcement organisations, security firms and even other research labs.
But about six of the biggest-scale monitors were harder to identify, as the companies behind them used third-party hosting firms to run the searches for them.
Why such firms wanted the massive amounts of data was unclear, said Dr Chothia.
"Many firms are simply sitting on the data. Such monitoring is easy to do and the data is out there so they think they may as well collect it as it may be valuable in future," he said.
Some firms alleged to be carrying out mass-scale monitoring have been accused of selling the data to copyright holders for marketing purposes.
"The data shows what content is popular and where," said Dr Chothia.
The study also revealed that so-called blocklists, used by some illegal file-sharers to prevent monitors from connecting to their computers, might not be much use.
"Many of the monitors we found weren't on the blocklists so these measures to bypass the monitors aren't really working," said Dr Chothia"


http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19474829



I am sure everyone knew they were being watched(The US wiki leaks shows they try to log everything ever), but I am surprised that a decent chunk of the monitors are marketing firms seeing what is most popular.
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