Vodafone accused of snooping on Users’ Surfing Activity

Vodafone UK, one of the leading mobile broadband providers operating in the United Kingdom has been accused of spying illegally on the internet surfing activity of its mobile broadband customers.

The problem was reportedly spotted by several customers after noticing that their internet surfing activity was being snooped by an automated internet spying system that would more or less immediately load the same URL (website address) an instant following their request.

This strange broadband internet stalker was soon traced back to its source by an enterprising customer. The person found its source at Bluecoat, a technology firm based in California. The company appears to have been serving Vodafone with filtering of websites, anti-malware and other services from 2006.

Webpulse is the name of the particular service of Bluecoat that is in question. Webpulse has been designed for categorising the content of websites and thus enabling the customers such as Vodafone to choose how they wished it to be treated.

Nevertheless it is still not totally clear what the mobile network operator was using the service for as it has hardly responded to the issues, although the adult website filtering of theirs is a likely candidate.

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