

Dutch carrier has been secretly spying on customers for at least 9 months - michh
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftweakers.net%2Fnieuws%2F74419%2Fkpn-past-deep-packet-inspection-toe-op-mobiel-internetverkeer.html&act=url

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BasDirks
Human (me) translation. All parentheses mine.

KPN uses deep packet inspection on mobile internet communications.

In a (Q&A) session with investors, KPN has admitted making use of
controversial deep packet inspection technologies. By doing so the
telecommunications company might be in violation of the law.

In a question and answer session with investors Marco Visser - VP of KPN
Mobiel Nederland - confirmed KPN to have used controversial deep packet
inspection eavesdropping methods to map mobile data traffic of it's customers.
"As far as we know we are the first in the world to do this", according to the
VP. According to Visser one of the purposes of dpi is measuring the WhatsApp-
penetration among certain groups of customers.

Tuesday KPN CEO Eelco Blok presented numbers(/statistics) meant to illustrate
the rapid growth of "sms-killer" WhatsApp among Hi(KPN)-customers. Now it is
understood from Visser's comments that this data has been collected with the
use of deep packet inspection over a period of at least nine months.

Visser also told shareholders that KPN intends to apply this same technology
to VOIP-traffic to enable them to charge separately for related applications.
Earlier this year KPN already announced the introduction of new subscription
models and for prices of mobile internet subscriptions to increase, but the
company never made clear which methods would be used to detect
uses/applications like VOIP in its mobile data-streams.

It's unclear if KPN currently still makes use of dpi on it's mobile network,
and if the telecommunications company also uses it on it's other networks; the
company has yet to respond to any questions regarding the matter. It's also
unknown whether KPN only analyses packet headers, or if their analysis also
includes the payload. Nevertheless KPN enters a gray area with their use of
dpi, and is possibly in violation of the law.

~~~
JCB_K
Clarification: Marco Visser isn't CEO, he's basically the VP of Mobile. Eelco
Blok, mentioned later, is the CEO of KPN.

~~~
BasDirks
corrected, thanks

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danieldk
For those not familiar with the matter: KPN used to be the state (monopoly)
teleco company before privatization of the telco industry. As some other
carriers, they banked too much on voice and SMS services. Since that income is
quickly evaporating, they have to fire thousands of employees in the near
future.

They are now trying to compensate their strategic mistakes by introducing
tiered internet subscriptions where customers pay higher subscription fees to
use VOIP and messaging services. Since there are only three big mobile
operators in The Netherlands (T-Mobile, Vodafone, KPN), the worry is that the
others will quickly follow suit.

~~~
darklajid
I wonder if that affects Germany as well. For all I know EPlus, one of big
three providers here (with T-Mobile/Vodafone) is part of the KPN group. It
will be interesting to see if this is a trend that propagates..

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rickmb
The news has now gone mainstream in the Netherlands, I doubt if this practice
will survive the legal and political shitstorm it's about to cause.

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joelhaasnoot
They are claiming now, that this was only done "to track the growth of
Whatsapp over the course of nine months". They're very interested in charging
extra for VOIP and Whatsapp-type services.

EDIT: See (dutch) statement at:
[http://www.kpn.com/corporate/overkpn/Perscentrum/nieuwsberic...](http://www.kpn.com/corporate/overkpn/Perscentrum/nieuwsbericht/Statement-
KPN-over-analyse-dataverkeer-1.htm) They used DPI to analyze Whatsapp usage
and are checking if all the rules were applied regarding data used for the
analysis.

~~~
Confusion
> charging extra

I doubt they will, as customers would simply leave for one of the competitors.
They will loose much more than they'll gain. Continuing to try and cash in on
SMS traffic is like continuing to try and sell music the old way: we've
entered a new era and that business model just won't work.

~~~
joelhaasnoot
I agree, I'm not at all sure how they plan on doing that. VoIP I can
understand, and most contracts/plans also ban "SMSoIP", but Whatsapp is
something different. For the longest time I had a phone with rockbottom SMS
rates sitting at home that I used a webinterface for to send messages cheaply.

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jorisw
Update: they just issued a statement saying they only used DPI to 'measure the
impact of WhatsApp'.

[http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h...](http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nu.nl%2Finternet%2F2513524%2Fkpn-
ontkent-inhoudelijk-bekijken-mobiel-internet.html)

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Joakal
Would SSL hide packet contents from deep packet inspection by an ISP?

~~~
jorisw
It will surely obscure the content of your packets, but the goal of the
carrier is to inspect what 'services' you are using that you are not
'entitled' to.

Port numbers for instance could point to certain services. Port numbers cannot
be obscured using an encryption layer such as SSL.

~~~
chalst
They can, of course, be obscured with port forwarding, but I guess that isn't
so big a current concern of the carriers.

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hammock
To be honest, way back when I got my first mobile data plan, it actually
surprised me to get the bill and NOT find a list of all the websites I had
been visiting, in the same way that it shows each text message and each phone
call w/phone number. I was kind of expecting them to be doing this from the
beginning.

