While the US government is giving ISPs free rein to track their customers' Internet usage for purposes of serving personalized advertisements, some Internet users are determined to fill their browsing history with junk so ISPs can't discover their real browsing habits.

Scripts and browser extensions might be able to fill your Web history with random searches and site visits. But will this actually fool an ISP that scans your Web traffic and shares it with advertising networks?

Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Technologist Jeremy Gillula is skeptical but hopes he's wrong. "I'd love to be proven wrong about this," he told Ars. "I'd want to see solid research showing how well such a noise-creation system works on a large scale before I trust it."

Steve Smith of Cambridge, Massachusetts contacted Ars and Gillula after our recent article about how the US Senate vote to eliminate ISP privacy rules affects users and what Internet users can do to hide their browsing history. He's a subscriber to this browser pollution approach.