Meet the iMarker, Russian targeted ad service which analyze your traffic on ISP side

Anton Nesterov komachi at openmailbox.org
Fri Jan 9 03:07:32 PST 2015


Actually, it seems like *it is* Phorm. They mention yourself as Phorm's
representatives in Russia here:
https://www.facebook.com/imarker.ru/photos/a.340885905946086.85421.332865510081459/905366306164707/
Seems like Phorm bought them at the some stage, and that tweet from
iMarker founder says they fired him
https://twitter.com/mberlizev/status/501487701124972544, also some info
about replaced software inside ISP networks without their knowledge
https://twitter.com/mberlizev/status/497329705163710464, another posts
in Mikhail Berzliev's company ADEx FB mention takeover by Phorm
https://facebook.com/adex.provider/posts/630807190348314
https://facebook.com/adex.provider/posts/630182937077406

Virilha:
> It remembers me about Phorm at UK, BR, some other countries also.
> 
> There is a firefox addon to detect / scramble / block this kind of
> redirects URLs, generating random unique IDs to throw garbage on the
> data the ISP collects.
> 
> https://www.dephormation.org.uk/?page=2
> 
> But seems its not open source.
> 
> --Virilha
> 
> ----- Message from Anton Nesterov <komachi at openmailbox.org> ---------
>    Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 20:45:13 +0000
>    From: Anton Nesterov <komachi at openmailbox.org>
> Subject: Meet the iMarker, Russian targeted ad service which analyze
> your traffic on ISP side
>      To: cypherpunks at cpunks.org
> 
> 
>> How it works?
>>
>> ISPs install the iMarker equipment and mirror all user's traffic on it
>> (Russian surveillance system, SORM, works the same way). Software takes
>> time, URL and HTTP Headers from HTTP requests. Then scraper with IP
>> 92.242.35.54 and User-Agent WebIndex follow every visited URL and
>> analyze its content. All this information used to build a profile for
>> user. They says that information is removed right after analysis, and
>> software saves only result of that analysis. Their website lists that
>> they categorize users by search queries, online shopping activity, time
>> of visits, activity on social networks, keywords on visited pages,
>> visited websites, social-demographic info, such as sex, age, marital
>> status, and education level, and then they use that data to distribute
>> users for consumers groups. Every user has some kind of pseudonymous ID
>> with linked profile.
>>
>> It's also has an opt-out option http://www.imrk.net/status
>>
>>
>> How many users affected?
>>
>> They says it's 38 million people all over Russia. Minister of
>> Communication Nikolay Nikiforov said in 2014 there was 62 million people
>> in Russia using Internet, 56m of them do it every day, so it's 61% of
>> Russian Internet users. iMarker's website list Akado, Rostelecom,
>> ER-Telecom, NetByNet, Qwerty, and TTK as ISPs that installed iMarker's
>> equipment.
>>
>>
>> How to check if this affects you?
>>
>> If you are a client of Russian ISP, you can check it here
>> http://imarker.valdikss.org.ru If you own a webserver, grep the logs for
>> connections from 92.242.35.54.
>>
>>
>> How do check script works?
>>
>> It generate a random link and wait for 3 seconds for connection from
>> iMarker's IP address.
>>
>>
>> How long iMarker works?
>>
>> Company start work on January 2010, commercial sells started on August
>> 2011.
>>
>>
>>
>> http://imarker.valdikss.org.ru/ — script that checks if your ISP use
>> iMarker
>> http://www.vedomosti.ru/tech/news/15669231/bolshoj-reklamnyj-brat>> report on iMarker from 2013, says they are ready to provide free DPI to
>> ISPs in exchange of user's data (Russian)
>> http://sporaw.livejournal.com/347832.html — blog post quoting private
>> mails from iMarker's crew (Russian)
>> http://www.imrk.net/privacy — TOS (Russian)
>> http://habrahabr.ru/post/247465/ — blog post about iMarker (Russian)
>> http://www.imarker.ru/ — iMarker website (Russian)
>> http://www.imrk.net/status — opt-out page (Russian)
>> http://minsvyaz.ru/ru/news/index.php?id_4=44571 — Nikiforov's statement
>> on number of Russian Internet users (Russian)
>>
>> -- 
>> https://nesterov.pw
>> GPG key: 0CE8 65F1 9043 2B11 25A5 74A7 1187 6869 67AA 56E4
>> https://keybase.io/komachi/key.asc
> 
> 
> ----- End message from Anton Nesterov <komachi at openmailbox.org> -----
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 


-- 
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