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Articles for Category Tag - Internet Privacy

2021 Queens Speech Touts Online Safety Bill and Broadband Boost

11th May, 2021 (0 Comments)

The Queen has today carried out the first State Opening of Parliament since the pandemic began, which sets out the UK Government’s agenda for the coming session. As expected this included various references to gigabit broadband and mobile connectivity, as well as their plans to publish the controversial Online Safety Bill.

New Resolver Policy Proposed to Improve Internet DNS Privacy

30th March, 2021 (0 Comments)

A new industry initiative – the ‘European DNS Resolver Policy‘ – has been established that aims to foster better standards for privacy and transparency across resolver services for the internet’s Domain Name System (DNS), such as those run by UK or European broadband ISPs and third-party services (e.g. Google Public DNS).

ICO and Ofcom See Recent UK Surge in Nuisance and Scam Calls

23rd March, 2021 (22 Comments)

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and Ofcom have today published an update to their joint plan for tackling nuisance and scam calls, which comes after they both reported a surge in complaints from September/October to December 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.

The New UK Telecoms Security Bill is Starting to Look a Bit Ugly

16th March, 2021 (10 Comments)

At present most of the mentions you’ll see around the UK Government’s new Telecoms Security Bill (TSB) tend to involve Huawei’s ban (here) and its impact upon FTTP broadband or 5G mobile networks, but as time goes on it’s becoming increasingly clear that the bill hides a number of other nasty surprises.

Error message concept. Alert, attention notification. Important reminder

Security Fail Allowed TalkTalk Customer to See Different Person’s Account UPDATE

13th March, 2021 (32 Comments)

One of TalkTalk’s UK broadband ISP customers, who asked to remain anonymous, has criticised the provider for being “staggeringly uninterested” after he reported a security flaw, which persisted for the best part of a week and enabled him to see the private personal account details of a different subscriber.

Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

11th March, 2021 (72 Comments)

Two unnamed broadband or mobile ISPs are reportedly helping the UK Home Office and the National Crime Agency (NCA) to trial a new internet snooping system on their customers, which is being conducted as part of the controversial 2016 UK Investigatory Powers Act (aka – snoopers charter).

Mobile giant Vodafone UK and Sky (Comcast) have reportedly two among several "groups" that have approached budget conscious fixed broadband ISP TalkTalk about a potential deal (most likely an acquisition), which in theory could create a much larger provider with more influence over the industry. Just to recap. In 2020 TalkTalk became the subject of a £1.1bn takeover by Toscafund - controlled by hedge fund tycoon Martin Hughes (here), which including debt valued the broadband provider at around £1.8bn. The deal took the ISP private and gave them more financial flexibility for their future plans. Since then, they've backed Freedom Fibre (here) and this week made the notable acquisition of Ethernet provider Virtual1 (here). According to the FT (paywall) and Sky News, TalkTalk is now said to have asked investment bank Lazard to review its options after allegedly being approach by several groups, including Vodafone and Sky (Sky Broadband). Lazard is a logical choice as they recently acted as Financial Advisor to TalkTalk on the Virtual1 transaction. Some industry analysts have reportedly suggested that TalkTalk itself could now be worth "at least" £3bn. But this seems rather optimistic for an ISP that doesn't have any significant fixed line broadband infrastructure to call its own (excluding their old unbundled LLU network) and largely just piggybacks off Openreach (BT), CityFibre and Freedom Fibre. But TalkTalk do have a strong business and wholesale side. Funnily enough, Sky Broadband are in a similar position with their own fixed line base, while Vodafone also likes to piggyback off Openreach and CityFibre. At present, Vodafone has a fixed broadband base of 991,000 customers, while Sky Broadband is estimated to be home to around 6.7 million and TalkTalk has approximately 4.2 million. Suffice to say, anybody gobbling up TalkTalk would instantly become a much larger provider, giving them a greater say in how the UK broadband market develops and more opportunities for convergence (Vodafone with mobile, and Sky with mobile and TV). Crucially, TalkTalk's consumer base is mostly made up of those on older copper and hybrid fibre lines (i.e. ADSL and FTTC / VDSL2), which are ripe for a future migration to FTTP. At the time of writing, all of the aforementioned operators have decline to comment on the reports, and TalkTalk has yet to receive any serious formal offers. In other words, we strongly suspect that this is largely just an exercise in spin to help TalkTalk drum up some more productive interest in the idea. But at the same time, it's not unreasonable to suspect that they might succeed, as the interest seems genuine. On the other hand, we see reports like this every year or so and only a very few ever convert into a serious offer. Time will tell. Much may depend upon whether or not TalkTalk’s new owners are more flexible and pragmatic about doing a deal than the previous lot. Arguably, TalkTalk might have gone much further by now had they taken some different decisions a few years ago (e.g. co-investing in FTTP instead of Pay TV).

Broadband ISP TalkTalk Preps New UK Smart Home Protection

21st January, 2021 (16 Comments)

Budget conscious internet provider TalkTalk appears to be nearing completion of a new ‘Smart Home Protection‘ service (app), which is currently being trialled by a number of their broadband customers and looks to be an upgrade of their existing ‘Supersafe Boost’ (usually costs an extra £4 per month) and HomeSafe service.

NordVPN Moving Network from 1Gbps to 10Gbps Servers UPDATE

21st December, 2020 (9 Comments)

NordVPN, which is a popular Virtual Private Network (VPN) provider, has announced that they’re upgrading more of their infrastructure to adopt 10Gbps (Gigabits per second) capable servers in order to boost speeds. London, Singapore, and a part of the US are planned to go live by the end of this year.

Online Harms – UK Finalise Plan for Ofcom Internet Regulation

15th December, 2020 (16 Comments)

The UK government has today appeared to finalise their plans for turning Ofcom into a regulator of internet content via a new legal “duty of care“, which will hand them new powers to force websites (e.g. Facebook) into removing “harmful” content (e.g. terrorism, child abuse, self-harm and suicide imagery etc.).

Gov Tightens Huawei 5G Mobile and FTTP Broadband Restrictions

30th November, 2020 (10 Comments)

In another telecoms policy surprise the UK Government has today announced that mobile operators, such as Three UK, EE (BT) and Vodafone, must stop installing “any” Huawei equipment in ultrafast 5G networks from the end of September 2021. A 35% cap on kit will also apply to FTTP and gigabit broadband from Jan 2023.

Amazon’s Sidewalk Shared Wireless Network Should Be Opt-In

25th November, 2020 (14 Comments)

At some point in the near future Amazon plans to introduce a new feature to their smart devices (Echo, Echo Show, Ring etc.) called ‘Sidewalk‘, which by default will create a new wireless network – this has access to both your broadband ISP connection and that of your neighbour’s (if they have similar kit) – to improve connectivity.

ip address Fiber optic cables for backbone lines on blue network background

New Bill Laid to BAN Huawei and Boost UK Telecoms Security

24th November, 2020 (12 Comments)

The Government will today publish their Telecommunications (Security) Bill, which imposes new rules to improve the security of UK networks (mobile and broadband) and ban “high risk vendors” like Huawei, while also threatening fines of up to £100k a day (or 10% of turnover) against operators that fail to meet the standard.

UK Mobile Operators Launch NumberVerify to Combat Fraud UPDATE

18th November, 2020 (24 Comments)

Mobile network operators including EE (BT), O2, Three UK and Vodafone have today collaborated to launch a new service called NumberVerify (NV), which is a new consumer safety solution that aims to make it both easier and more secure to authenticate a user’s identity for online transactions.

Law Firm Starts Legal Action Over Virgin Media UK Data Breach

14th October, 2020 (17 Comments)

A consumer action law firm, Your Lawyers, has today announced that they’ve launched a Group Action Claim against broadband ISP Virgin Media UK, which gives the provider “four weeks to admit liability” for a recent data breach that exposed the personal details belonging to 900,000 of their customers.

Questions for UK Gov as EU Court Rules on Internet Data Snooping

6th October, 2020 (12 Comments)

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has this morning issued a ruling that appears to impose restrictions on the general and indiscriminate retention of phone and internet data, which raises some new questions for the UK Government’s Investigatory Powers Act (IPAct) – also known as the “snoopers charter.”

NordVPN Named Top VPN for Speed in 2020 AV-TEST Benchmark

1st October, 2020 (15 Comments)

A new report from internet security firm AV-TEST has benchmarked several popular Virtual Private Network (VPN) providers and found that NordVPN was the “clear winner” for measured broadband download and upload speeds in three major world regions (UK, Japan and the US west coast). Well.. they did commission the “independent” test.

New UK Smart Data Laws May Help Broadband Deal Comparisons

10th September, 2020 (0 Comments)

The UK Government has proposed to mandate that broadband and phone providers, as well as related companies in the sector, should participate in their new “Smart Data” initiative, which aims to foster the “sharing [of] customer data” in order to deliver better product comparisons and billing management across accounts etc.