I need a Windows programmer, ‘cause I have an idea how we can completely disrupt the ISPs’ ability to resell our browsing data...but I don’t have the chops (any more) to write the code. Here’s the bare outline:
Imagine your computer, could, while you’re not using it, continuously and repetitively make connections to random websites, spend a few minutes following links, then move on to a new website. Just leave your computer on, and let it contaminate the list of websites you’ve visited with lists of website your human-emulating bit of software in your browser visits on your behalf.
Principles:
1. The Proposed Software (TPS) would keep some secure record of your personal attributes...like the fraction of the day recently spent (manually) browsing, and typical starting and ending hours. It can capture those automatically. TPS would be idle except just before, and just after your customary use times. And, it would add an incremental amount to your browsing time fraction. Now it’s emulating your recent habits; you change your habits, the program adapts.
2. TPS would work in Windows and Android implementation, and expand to Mac, iOS and Linux over time.
3. TPS must know the properties of your contract: If you have a 2GB monthly limit (e.g., my cellphone), the app would not drive your consumption over that limit. Therefore it needs to keep track of your “real” data usage on your computer (and inform you when you’re getting close to your contract limit.
4. TPS will have access to your browsing history, and pick random sites (i.e., NOT in your history) to visit when your browser is idle (you just keep it open on your desktop or your phone...on a charger).
5. TPS will run in the background, and merely monitor while YOU are browsing. After you’ve stopped, it starts finding similar sites to visit (if you went to Frigidaire to look up a refrigerator feature list, but you didn’t go to GE, it uses access to a “similarity” table (or website, accessed using TOR) to create a list of alternative websites. Time between bogus-site visits would be based on the history of your own site visits, adapting over time.
6. TPS must protect itself from being exposed as an automated “bot,” emulating your behavior. (Although this may be optional; it still should not give away its’ own record of which sites are yours, and which are bogus to any query from outside the computer.)
It’s not perfect (if you have three sites you regularly visit every day, and spend lots of time on, they’re bound to ferret those out...but, THAT you have TPS running will make their job a lot more difficult.
Okay, it’s only a “Partly Baked Idea” (PBI ® :-)), but, if we can’t stop this abuse of our behaviors, let’s make the task of tracking our habits significantly harder. The more we do that, the more expensive we make it for them to treat us as mere “consumers” to be inundated, and the fewer bogus spam and robocall “offers” we’ll have to fend off.
What are YOUR ideas to undermine this corporate violation of our privacy and turn us into nothing but destinations for more offers to sell us crap? Go ahead, give me a better idea worth pursuing. I might be wrong, and you may be right, but let us NOT be complacent about this violation of our essential need for privacy in our lives.