Stop ISP's snooping on your web activity?

Question

I read today that there are now 6 ISP's in the UK who have agreed to "closely monitor the web traffic of its customers" and send warning letters out to those who infringe copyright. This seems to me a gross invasion of privacy, and another reason why I don't want to live in the UK anymore!

I am not a large downloader, do not use P2P, and rarely use bit torrent. However, I do sometimes download tv shows from the States, not available in the UK, using rapidshare. Would this be detected?

Is it possible to mask your online acivity from your ISP, perhaps using a proxy, or Peer guardian etc?

Answer 1

It is happening everywhere...you also didn't see the part where it says the ISP will sell the information they collect about you to companies who can use your surfing habits to build a profile about you and market certain products to you (it is called behavioral targeting).

The invasion if privacy is outrageous....do a little bit more reading about it and you will find out so many people are spying on you at any given time.  You NEED to use a procy server to mask your online activities.  A proxy server will replace your IP address so that you can't have your surfing tracked.  And just as a word of advice from researching a ton of these...free ones are c**p and will put you in more danger.  Those are usually used by students who need to get on MySpace at school and offer no protection.

Answer 2

I read the same article and I'm disappointed with changes that allow ISP monitoring.  I don't do any illegal file copying and I'm still against it just on principal.  The ISPs that agree to monitoring are now taking on a new role that no longer leaves them solely as a telecommunication provider but a "nanny".  Doing so opens them to liability that telecommunication providers managed to avoid by being only "carriers" of information (voice communication at the time, but now data carriers).

Answer 3

Unfortunately the whole world is turning into a planet of police states....slowly but surely......

so there'd be no safe place to go. restrictions on every aspect of life are occurring everywhere.)

One option:

If you're using something like BitTorrent you could turn encryption on so you're ISP won't know what you're actually downloding