Russian advertisers offered free DPI to Internet service providers in exchange for spying on users

According to the Vedomosti newspaper, the Russian advertising service iMarker offered Internet providers another source of revenue. They offer to make money on targeted Internet advertising, free of charge by installing a proprietary system for analyzing traffic iMarker, which is in essence DPI (Deep Packet Inspection, a system for monitoring and controlling traffic). The system will be able to track any unencrypted traffic of users - from e-mail and calls to images and private messages in social networks. It will collect and analyze data on which sites the user visits and will form his consumer profile. This allows the company iMarker and its partners to produce advertising targeting by interest and thereby increase the profit from the sale of advertising. Now one household brings iMarker $ 0.1 per month, operators will receive a part of this money.







iMarker has been operating since January 2010, 11 operators have already installed its system (including four branches of Rostelecom), and it collects data on 12% of runet users, said entrepreneur iMarker, entrepreneur Mikhail Berlysev. According to him, iMarker now earns about $ 100,000 per month from advertising and this amount doubles every few months.





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The problem is that DPI is also used to block access to sites from various “blacklists” by URL, and not by IP, as most Russian providers do, referring to the high cost of equipment. Since November 1, 2012, a law requiring the blocking of websites with harmful information for children came into force, and since August 1, 2013, the law on blocking websites with pirated movies and the proposal from iMarker may be an advantageous solution for providers for free blocking sites, plus additional profits from spying on customers. Having a full-fledged DPI at its disposal, the provider will be able to block certain types of traffic (for example, VPN) that are used by users to bypass blocking. In addition, it is unclear what, in general, providers have the right to sell data on user behavior to third-party companies ...