Overview

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 Questions
 Anonymous hubs

Overview

Many people are now aware that many of the major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) watch them as they surf around the Internet, generating profiles that they can then sell to advertisers. Many feel, as they are paying for their Internet service, they have a right to control what information is shared and with whom. This is certainly a legitimate concern for Internet users, and it is one for which GhostSurf is, in part, able to address.

Because ISPs handle huge volumes of web traffic all the time, they are limited in the types of spying they can do. For example, they don't have the computational resources to read and analyze the text of every web site you and all your fellow Internet users visits. They can, however, keep a log of the websites you visit; this requires, by comparison, very little space and processor power, and it's ultimately just as useful for advertisers.

GhostSurf's anonymous hubs feature blocks this spying method, because when you're using anonymous hubs you only connect to one website (the anonymous hub). All the real websites you visit go through that hub, so to your ISP it looks like you only visit one website but to you, the whole Internet is accessible. In this way, GhostSurf allows you to surf the web without your ISP's spying on you.

This is, however, an imperfect solution to this problem. If the ISP (or a government agency) really wanted to watch you, they could tap your Internet connection and actually read everything that goes back and forth. Since the data sent to the anonymous hub is not encrypted, someone who listens to the line could see what sites you're visiting.

In practice, you can expect that GhostSurf's anonymous hubs force your ISP to give up spying on you. Just as the government can afford to wire-tap certain individuals, but could never afford to wire-tap everyone in the country, your ISP can listen to you if it really has a strong reason but can't do this for everyone. As a result, ISPs only pursue the easy, low-cost methods of generating personal profiles; if it's expensive and difficult, the cost is greater than the worth of the information it generates.