Vodafone accused of ‘spying’ on broadband customers

Mobile network operator Vodafone has been accused of spying on its broadband customers by monitoring their surfing habits without their permission according to reports.

According to recent reports the mobile network operator Vodafone has been accused of ‘illegally’ spying on its broadband customers by monitoring their surfing habits without permission. A number of customers are said to have noticed that their surfing was being monitored through the use of an automated system, which was quickly loading the same website address over and over again.

One consumer is said to have decided to track down the website, and found that it belonged to a company in California called Bluecoat. This company is said to have been supplying Vodafone with services such as anti-malware, anti-spyware, and website filtering for a number of years now.

In explanation Vodafone told one company that contacted them: “The Blue Coat filter classifies every internet site into one or more of over 70 categories. In order to apply the adult bar to protect our younger customers, Vodafone takes these 70+ categories and rates them as either Adult or Universal. As the internet is growing at an ever increasing rate, so there are a percentage of sites not yet classified by Blue Coat as they are too new. To be on the safe side, when a user requests a site that is not classified, the Blue Coat system pulls up the page requested and checks to see if there is any obvious content that would make it necessary to classify it.”

It added: “If it does appear adult, then the warning page is displayed. If not, it is served to the customer in the normal way. In order that we preserve customer service in terms of performance, but do not compromise safety, this is all done simultaneously.”

What do you think of Vodafone’s explanation for tracking users’ surfing habits? Let us know with your comments.

Source – TechEye