I'm Spartacus

I'm Spartacus is a simple way to frustrate and protest attempts to monitor your use of the internet. Designed to protest against the UK Snoopers' Charter, it will be of use wherever there is need to show dissent against intrusions into your privacy.

Whenever you use the internet, whenever you visit a webpage your activity is logged by your internet provider, and possibly by others. What do they use this information for? Well, whatever they want. In the UK this activity can be accessed by the Police and Security Services. Oh, and the Health and Safety Executive, the Food Standards Agency and the Welsh Ambulance Services, among others. Maybe 'you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide', but this kind of surveillance will only catch the innocent and the incompetent; the innocent shouldn't be targeted and the incompetent can be caught using any number of existing techniques. What this surveillance will be good for is monitoring the population for social control: monitoring political opposition groups, shutting down popular protests, and political manipulation.

I'm Spartacus works by visiting websites on your behalf. Its website visits will be logged as well as yours, so anyone monitoring your internet activity won't know whether the activity was by you, or by I'm Spartacus. It decides which pages to visit, trying to look like casual browsing behaviour to make interpretation of the data difficult.

There is no assurance that this information will be kept securely. Sure, they'll claim it will be held under the greatest security, but so has all the information that has been lost before. And if it gets into the wrong hands maybe it could be used for criminal purposes.

I'm Spartacus isn't designed to replace strong methods to protect your privacy, such as VPN or TOR. Even if you use I'm Spartacus, snoopers will still be able to see what websites you do visit. But I'm Spartacus will corrupt the databases of internet activity, making 'data mining' against whole populations almost impossible to undertake reliably.

I'm Spartacus works if even a few people use it, filling the internet logging databases with useless data for those individuals, but its main purpose is in allowing public protest, and in that respect the more people that use it the better. It's free to use, so please tell others about it so that we can send a strong message to commercial organisations and governments that our internet usage data is private.

Let I'm Spartacus help you protest against draconian intrusions into your privacy.

FAQ

Will it use my all my data?

I'm Spartacus is designed to be considerate of your data allowances -- by default it is set to not exceed 10MB per month for mobile data or 100MB for WiFi data.

What sort of websites will it visit?

I'm Spartacus tries to look like normal browsing, but it will intentionally visit some 'contentious' websites. It does have internal controls to stop it downloading illegal or immoral content. Note, however, that the websites it attempts to visit might not be legal if you live in a country with very strict internet controls.

What if the website it visits is dodgy/contains a virus?

I'm Spartacus operates completely separately from your browser in a 'sand-boxed' environment, and it doesn't download any content that might harbour malicious code.

What about battery life?

I'm Spartacus is designed to have only minimal impact on battery life.

SUPPORT OUR CAMPAIGN

I'm Spartacus might be free, but our campaign takes real money to run. Want to have more control over the way I'm Spartacus is behaving, and at the same time support our fight against unwarranted intrusions into privacy? The Supporters' Upgrade allows you to manage the amount of data I'm Spartacus uses, the frequency of website visits and the types of websites visited. Supporters' payments will be used to fight the invasion of privacy that comes from monitoring of your internet usage.