You pay for your broadband modem, you pay the ISP to keep delivering your service, and what do you get in return? They spy, monitor, and insert ads into your web pages for good measure. Apparently a certain vendor (lets call them NebuAd) has been selling devices to ISPs to do precisely that. Your privacy is exchanged for traffic habits, you preferences, and custom tailored ads for you. Whatever happened to just 'um, no?'

Once upon a time ISPs just transported packets of information from place to place without looking at them other than to find out where they should go. Of course that could not last. Now a company is selling ISPs a device designed to spy on customer traffic, track preferences and insert specially selected ads during Web surfing.

The link for this article located at Network World is no longer available.