Deep packet inspection is the process of capturing your Internet communications and reading through it.  When you send an e-mail or surf the web, your Internet communication is much more than just the e-mail or web page you visit.  It contains all types of Internet headers that detail the communication and formatting as well as the actual e-mail or web page.  For the average person, most of this is completely unintelligible.  Deep packet inspection tools can strip out the extraneous information used by your computer and the Internet.

The problem is that in these packets is plenty of personal or confidential information.  You could have anything from log in information to financial data.  This is one of the ways that criminals steal your identity, access your accounts or find out way too much about you.

It looks like the US government is looking at the danger of deep packet inspection.  According to CIO magazine, Congress is looking at making this illegal.  Interesting enough, no one admits to performing deep packet inspection on your Internet communications.  However, your ISP, your employer and criminals have the ability to perform this inspection.

There is a solution today however.  We do not need to wait on the U.S. Congress.  You can use an anonymous proxy to encrypt your Internet communucation that can delay or defeat deep packet inspection.

As always, the key to digital privacy is to protect your privacy yourself.  Do not rely on others.  Privacy is taken, not given.

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Here is an AP article to update you on the technology forum in Brazil.

Here is a summary of the decisions made regarding the U.S. control over the Internet:

-None

Thank you and good night….

Anyway, no real action has been made in regulating the Internet, especially the U.S. control of the Internet. The only thing anyone knows right now is: “With no concrete recommendations for action, the only certainty going forward is that any resentment about the American influence will only grow as more users from the developing world come online, changing the face of the global network.”

It seems that the Russian representative took charge and requested “‘practical steps’ for moving Internet governance ‘under the control of the international community’” be made. Thanks for the heads up Russia…I thought this was the Brazil forum on introducing new lattes to Starbucks, err….never mind.

Brazil chimed in with the notion to make ICANN independent [of the U.S.] and wanted “more concrete recommendations out of the forum.”

So a big day in the tech world. Soon some “practical steps” will be presented as well as some other “concrete recommendations.” But as of today….no one has done anything about anything. Way to go ladies and gentlemen.

How can a global community be expected to govern the Internet when this forum can’t come up with anything? Basically, they met to say that for next time have some ideas. Sounds like a group of college students doing their final project. Great…

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