Is Comcast Intercepting Packets?

nihilist_1137 writes: "According this page, comcast is intercepting your packets to gain knowledge of your whereabouts and then reselling it to marketers." According to the linked message, "This allows them to not only log all http requests, but to also log the response. Maybe they want to profile their customer browsing history for subsidiaries or resale to marketers. Maybe they want to do their part in The War on Freedom. Maybe they just want passwords to porn sites. Apparently they aren't using it to maximize bandwidth, because it's not configured to serve cached data."

Comments

This has to be illegal

[Marx_Mrvelous]

Isn't tapping internet connections the same, legally, as a phone tap? It's nto legal for the phone company to listen in on your conversations to sell to advertisers, it can't possibly be legal to sniff packets to sell to marketers!

This could be a big oops for Comcast

[Joe Decker]

If they're collecting the data themselves, instead of using a third party, I believe they would be in direct violation of the Cable TV Privacy Act of 1984.

While IANAL, I work in the digital television middleware industry and have been involved in making sure that we do not inadvertantly let our customers run afoul of that precise law. It's not just the law, it's a good idea.

Tangent

[volpe]

I know I'm going off on a tangent here, and it's off-topic, but please bear with me.


The phone company doesn't tap converstations, but they sure as hell have a database of which line called which number, when, and for how long.

Can someone explain why the Good Guys always have to keep the Bad Guy on the line for something like three minutes in order to trace the call, when all they should have to do is call up the Phone Company (on another line) and ask them to punch up the number of the person calling this number right now?

Copyright violation

[coats]

If a comcast victim/customer sends a packet to port 80 at any IP address, it is intercepted by the Inktomi Traffic-Server, the contents of the packet are examined for the GET url and the "Host:" field. The Inktomi Traffic-Server then sends the http request on to your destination from it's address with modified content and headers... This allows them to monitor and change (or insert ads into) what you read.

Now look at that from my point of view as a content provider at the web site being requested.

Comcast is engaged in the large-scale activity of making unauthorized derivative works (with that modified content and extra ads) of (copyrighted!) web sites for commercial gain . If a few of us web-smiths nail down the evidence solidly, the court ought to make us rich off the damages! Not to mention the fun we could have following the (M$, BSA, Scientology) precedents with ex parte orders for copyright violation search!