on a side note, all industry routers now block known spambot ports. this cuts down on the spam trojans that go out and infect. Additionally, they
block ports of known viruses. certain ISPs block port 80 which would prevent you from hosting a website, and still others block port 25 to keep you
from running a mail server.
Port blocking has been around for 10 years. content filtering for about 5. It went mainstream about 3 years ago.
PeerGuardian phoenixlabs.org... is quite good at keeping known "tech companies" at bay when it comes to sniffing. Emphasis on "known". As
a general rule I only ever download books which are next to impossible for me to obtain using any other ( legal) means.
they don't have to sniff your connection. they simply sniff there own connection. Every piece of data you send has your IP address. thats how its all
routed.
It is good keep unwanteds out of your system, but when it comes to them tracking you. they use your own connection against you.