Usenet as an alternative to Bittorrent - Virgin spying on customers - Privacy

I hate the idea that ISPs (those providers of internet) are being bullied into spying on what we are doing, first by the likes of the MPAA (etc.) and now by the bigger kids in the playground like the French Government (who are bowing to the posh kids with all the money) and it won't be long until other governments decide to go the same way...It's wrong to tar everyone with the 'evil' brush...

If that wasn't bad enough, some ISP's are spotting a way of saving money off the back of this and quietly sorting/throttling popular packet types (like bittorrent for example) and dumping it to narrower bandwidth...I object to both of these practices - frankly it's no-one's business what I'm doing with my pipe on my own time...and if I want to transfer stuff around the place using torrents, why should I get a slower transfer speed than someone moving data with FTP or HTTP? It's definitely unreasonable and it's obvious why - it's so they don't have to bite the bullet and upgrade their networks to cope with increasing demand for fast broadband (remember all the wailing and crying from the ISPs when BBC iPlayer rolled out)?

So...especially if you are using Virgin for your internet access (as they have already publicly admitted they are now going to voluntarilly spy on what their clients are doing with their pipes, which is frankly shocking), rather than search for an ISP (with backbone/morals) quite yet, IMHO it's time to go underground...

For web access, unless it's other SSL stuff (like internet banking) or just reading the likes of the BBC website, I recommend Torpark (which is a Tor-network enabled Firefox browser), use gmail over that for email accces (a bit slower, but free, anonymous and encrypted)...if you have some cash to spend, use Xerobank for the same thing (it's fast)...

If you need to move big chunks of data around - ditch the torrents (where all the attention is at the moment) and go old skool ...Welcome (back) to Usenet (some parts of which actually pre-date the internet, believe it or not) -

Two articles you will need to read to get you up and running (looks like "Wired" has similar feelings to me) -

How to share files on Usenet

What are NZB files?

- one you might need -

How to bypass blocked usenet

- that will get you 95% free from attention (for now) and cost you nothing...however, personally, I'm going to go "the full tamale" and employ SSL (i.e. - Packet gets encrypted at your end, goes through your ISP, can't be packet sniffed and therefore can't be deliberately slowed down or stopped by your ISP or pawed through and licked by the French Government...it gets safely decrypted at the other end and visa-versa...and then *everything* you do is just a big stream of anonymous, classless gibberish to the prying eyes that lurk in the underpipes (to which all they can do is shrug and shuffle on to the next victim)...thus leaving your ISP (in your case at least) to do exactly what they should be doing - providing fast, reliable internet access and not to be lackies for the money-grabbing lawyers of the music industry in the far-off US of A...

100 400? Where the *NTL* is BBC1?

Looks like NTL has (in their wisdom) re-numbered all their channels...resulting in 10 minutes of rebooting and confusion as I was pressing "1" on the remote and ending up on either channel 100 or 400 (both "Pay as you go"/"On demand" cash cow channels)...looks like they are hunting the confused and vulnerable for extra cash (if you ask me)...I mean, since when was BBC1 on channel "101"...yes, very clever, I'm sure you will catch out numerous poor grandmothers trying to get to their programmes by clicking "Watch"...even to me, this was extremely annoying at the end of another *very* long working day, and *especially* today...

I was six inches (of patience) from ripping the box free and throwing it across the room, before my internal diagnotics routed me around the (unnecessary) cause of the stress...

Sorry, this wouldn't be too bad, but the last few months they have been charging me about £80 per month for 2 broadband connections (both the wrong speed, and I only have the one (slower one))...neither of which I *ever* asked for, they were offered as free bonuses because of previous (week long) outages thanks largely to faulty NTL hardware...and every call I have made had just made matters worse (always they up the bill, even though the fault is theirs)...

NTL = Absolute chaos/Terrible service/Deliberate Rip off merchants/Virtually impossible to contact on (vaguely definable as) "technical" support numbers

Time to move...shame I live in the middle of the country and choices are limited...don't want to consider the fact that they may already have collected that information and are ramming me appropriately, but I wouldn't put it past them...