Meet the iMarker, Russian targeted ad service which analyze your traffic on ISP side

Anton Nesterov komachi@openmailbox.org
Thu Jan 8 12:45:13 PST 2015


How it works?

ISPs install the iMarker equipment and mirror all user's traffic on it
(Russian surveillance system, SORM, works the same way). Software takes
time, URL and HTTP Headers from HTTP requests. Then scraper with IP
92.242.35.54 and User-Agent WebIndex follow every visited URL and
analyze its content. All this information used to build a profile for
user. They says that information is removed right after analysis, and
software saves only result of that analysis. Their website lists that
they categorize users by search queries, online shopping activity, time
of visits, activity on social networks, keywords on visited pages,
visited websites, social-demographic info, such as sex, age, marital
status, and education level, and then they use that data to distribute
users for consumers groups. Every user has some kind of pseudonymous ID
with linked profile.

It's also has an opt-out option http://www.imrk.net/status


How many users affected?

They says it's 38 million people all over Russia. Minister of
Communication Nikolay Nikiforov said in 2014 there was 62 million people
in Russia using Internet, 56m of them do it every day, so it's 61% of
Russian Internet users. iMarker's website list Akado, Rostelecom,
ER-Telecom, NetByNet, Qwerty, and TTK as ISPs that installed iMarker's
equipment.


How to check if this affects you?

If you are a client of Russian ISP, you can check it here
http://imarker.valdikss.org.ru If you own a webserver, grep the logs for
connections from 92.242.35.54.


How do check script works?

It generate a random link and wait for 3 seconds for connection from
iMarker's IP address.


How long iMarker works?

Company start work on January 2010, commercial sells started on August 2011.



http://imarker.valdikss.org.ru/ — script that checks if your ISP use iMarker
http://www.vedomosti.ru/tech/news/15669231/bolshoj-reklamnyj-brat —
report on iMarker from 2013, says they are ready to provide free DPI to
ISPs in exchange of user's data (Russian)
http://sporaw.livejournal.com/347832.html — blog post quoting private
mails from iMarker's crew (Russian)
http://www.imrk.net/privacy — TOS (Russian)
http://habrahabr.ru/post/247465/ — blog post about iMarker (Russian)
http://www.imarker.ru/ — iMarker website (Russian)
http://www.imrk.net/status — opt-out page (Russian)
http://minsvyaz.ru/ru/news/index.php?id_4=44571 — Nikiforov's statement
on number of Russian Internet users (Russian)

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