Several internet service providers across the United States are using an online service to secretly spy on, and redirect their subscribers’ online searches, according to a group of researchers at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California.
The ISPs are monitoring, intercepting, and redirecting the searches that their subscribers are performing through the search boxes in their browsers, say the researchers.
“Instead of returning a legitimate address for search.yahoo.com, www.bing.com, and (sometimes) www.google.com, these ISPs returned the address of proxy servers,” Nick Weaver, one of the researchers, told TPM.
“These proxy servers impersonate the legitimate search engine by transparently forwarding requests to the legitimate search engine, but have the ability to both monitor all queries and change the results.”
From TPM IdeaLAB: http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/researchers-us-internet-service-providers-are-hijacking-customers-searches.php