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!

Re:This has to be illegal

[bourne]

Isn't tapping internet connections the same, legally, as a phone tap?

Probably, but this probably isn't "tapping internet connections." I'll bet you dollars to donuts that when Comcast gets called on this, they'll explain how they're only "capturing and keeping limited information" with "aggregate identification only" so that they can "optimize their network configuration" or something like that. 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.

They might even be telling the truth. Not that we care - who wants to be the first to write an app that makes random requests to random domains constantly so as to screw up their database?

Re:This has to be illegal

[gmhowell]

I probably signed some BS license agreement that gave them the right to do that. Doesn't matter. With spamcop, spamassassin, and all of that (plus the fact that they STILL don't have a working email address for me) they can't send me spam. And with caller id, I haven't spoken to a salesman since I stopped answering blocked numbers. And, finally, with my hosts file, I don't even see 90% of the ads anymore.

Re:This has to be illegal

[hex1848]

Its all in the terms of service:

COLLECTION, USE AND DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION ON
SUBSCRIBER USE

Collection of Information: Comcast collects, uses and releases information on Customer use of the Service as necessary to render the Service, to otherwise undertake legitimate business activities related to the Service and to comply with law. Comcast may collect information in accordance with applicable law concerning Customer's use of the Service and customer preferences which are reflected in the choices that a customer makes among the range of services offered as part of the Service, the time that the customer actually uses the Service, the menus and features used most often by the Customer, and other information about a customer's "electronic browsing."

Use of Information: Collecting information contained in transmissions made by Customer through the Service directed at Comcast, its Underlying Providers, Internet web sites, or other service providers to which access is provided as part of the Service, is necessary to provide the Service. Comcast's detailed business records generally are used to help make sure customers are properly billed; to send customers pertinent information about the Service; and for accounting purposes. Customer information is also used to execute requests and orders placed by customers with advertisers, merchants, and other service providers; to understand customers' reactions to various features of the Service or the Internet; and to personalize the Service based on the interests of customers. Such information helps Comcast improve the Service and uncover unauthorized access to the Service or Customer data and may be provided to law enforcement agencies in the event of such unauthorized access.

Confidentiality of Information: Comcast considers the personally identifiable Customer information that is collected to be confidential. Comcast will disclose to third parties personally identifiable information that Comcast maintains related to customers only when it is necessary to deliver the Service to customers or carry out related business activities, in the ordinary course of business, for ordinary business purposes, and at a frequency dictated by Comcast's particular business need, or pursuant to a court order or order of any regulatory body having jurisdiction over matters which are the subject of this Agreement. Additional information regarding disclosure of personally identifiable information is described in the Privacy Statement which can be accessed through the Comcast High-Speed Internet Service home page.

Re:This has to be illegal

[tomstdenis]

Depends. The only reason tapping phones is illegal [at least in most countries] is because of the explicit right and expectation of privacy.

If you shouted in public something you can hardly feel violated when others learn about it.

The internet is inherently non-private. If you want a private connection use crypto. Otherwise, work under the assumption that everyone else knows everything you do on the net.

Tom

Re:This has to be illegal

[yintercept]

Comcast considers customer information that is collected to be confidential

Of course they consider it "confidential". You get a lot more money when the information you're selling is confidential!!!!

Re:This has to be illegal

[raju1kabir]

The only reason tapping phones is illegal [at least in most countries] is because of the explicit right and expectation of privacy. If you shouted in public something you can hardly feel violated when others learn about it. The internet is inherently non-private.

This is absurd. Internet traffic is no more "non-private" than a telephone call. The fact that means exist for people along the traffic path to intercept communications doesn't mean that they're allowed to. If that were the case, all laws governing phone tapping would be moot since the tapping would not be technically possible.

Re:This has to be illegal

[Kalrand]

>who wants to be the first to write an app that makes
>random requests to random domains constantly so as to screw up their database?

You mean actually follow the links on a slashdot story?

Isn't this just a normal Transparent Proxy???

[tupps]

Both Cable Internet Providers and I am sure many other ISP's in Australia use Transparent Proxies.

Much easier to setup on the client side and you catch people who leave out the proxy information.

The fact that the server has other capabilities doesn't mean that they are actually using this stuff. If someone can show me a link to the page where I can buy the marketing data, *then* i will believe you.

This is just speculation.

Copyright to the rescue

[Anonymous Coward]

My packets are copyrighted, so legally they can't copy and resell them without my written authorization.

This is not a story...

[DaSyonic]

I think the fact that this was mailed to bugtraq yet it apparantly got denied is proof of that...

Many ISPs do transparent caching. Transparent caching at ISPs is more than acceptable. It's not acceptable when major backbones do it, as has happened in the past.

The fact that they can log what you do is just a side effect. The same can be done WITHOUT transparent caching. The 'author' says they added hardware just for this. Well of course they did! They're just trying to speed up access without needing as big of a link needed without using transparent caching.

And at any rate, I'm surprised this got posted. It's just some guy posting to two mailing lists, which got denied at that!

Ultimately though, I feel ISPs should provide a means to remove you from having your link transparently cached. If they do that, then you can't blame them for trying to save bandwidth. The results of a transparent cache can be substantial!

Re:This is not a story...

[Sabriel]

Many ISPs do transparent caching. Transparent caching at ISPs is more than acceptable.

The post says "Apparently they aren't using it to maximize bandwidth, because it's not configured to serve cached data" ...

So yeah, transparent caching is good, except that's NOT what this Comcast server is doing according to the poster.

New service packages

[hex1848]

I got forwarded this by one of my buddies at work. At this prices its plain sick that they also want to sell your usage statistics to the SPAMERS. On top of that I've been told that they want every computer on there network using proxy clients in order to connect.

I'm glad sprint just hooked up DSL in my area, I'm switching providers.

According to insiders at Comcast there will be three tiers of service. The current service will be called Silver and it will be 1500/128 for $49.95 plus modem rental. Yes that is true, they are planning on a $10 price increase within the next year after the transition is complete and the merger with AT&T Broadband Internet is finalized. Comcast doesn't want to mess with the rates right now until they get regulatory approval for the merger. But the S.O.P. at AT&T and Comcast is a price increase after a merger. Look at what Cable rates did after the Mediaone transition.

Gold service will be 1500/300 and will allow VPN access and something they are calling priority traffic. This is the old Pro service. The cost will be $99.95. If you are a gamer used to the old MediaOne performance, this Gold level should get you back close to the perf you had with the old system. And yes that means you will be paying double for the same service you had last year.

The new low price option is Bronze. Expected to be 128/64 or maybe 256/128 it should be priced at $29.95. This is the one that is most in the air. I haven't seen a bronze config file yet to see what they are planning.

Modem rentals will be $5 and may increase to $7.

Evidence, please?

[1010011010]

How do we not know they're just implementing a web cache to save money and provide better service? Lots of ISPs do this. Why page to get the pictures from the homepage of cnn.com 458,765 times an hour when once will do?

This allows them to monitor and change (or insert ads into) what you read.

Posh. Fear-mongering. Come back with some evidence -- and I'll be as against it as the next guy. And if they are actually inserting ads, then they'll probably be in court with CNN, Disney, etc, so forth, for modifying and distributing copyrighted material.

Interestingly, regardless of what IP you address the packet to, the Inktomi Traffic-Server reads the Host: field to determine where to send the packet. I sent several packets from my home machine to one of my office machines, inside the packet was "Host: www.comcast.net". Comcast illegally intercepted, misinterpreted and altered this packet, and sent it to www.comcast.com. So, you might say there's a bug in this evil Inktomi Traffic-Server thing.


Oh, shut up. That's how a transparent proxy works. I suppose the Linux facilities for transparent proxing -- available for years now -- are also evil?

Where's my clue-by-four...

Hold your horses...

[Calrathan]

Now wait a second. Before we all flip out and start bashing ComCast, lets realize a couple things.

Number one, this guy just got transitioned. A lot of people all over the country have been going through the same thing, and not everyone is seeing the same thing as him. As 'hostman' from the MESH (Michigan Engineering Software and Hardware http://misc.eecs.umich.edu/) discussion email list wrote:

"This whole thread got me a bit peeved, so I went home and ran a few tests. I was unable to find any evidence of the packet modification described. It is possible the described issue is not an issue here in A^2, as we 'transitioned' from MediaOne's service, not @Home..."

Secondly, your ISP has the right to monitor traffic to ensure quality of service. Just because the caching part of the server is not currently running, it does not mean that they aren't phasing it into the system. At this point it's just speculation. They might even have more rights to monitor what you're doing, depending on your service agreement. Read it.

Lets get some REAL evidence of what's going on other than this hear-say. Someone show us some modified packet headers, and someone else reproduce those results, and MAYBE I'll believe it then.

Re:Hold your horses...

[jandrese]

After the switchover we noticed a big hit too. I suspect it might have something to do with the usenet servers now being outside of the network. Usenet seems to consume an enormous amount of bandwidth at Comcast, and since you have to jump completely out of their network now, I suspect their backbone connections are saturated.

This might be "fixed" once they either kill the usenet servers entirely or set up new ones inside their network like a sane ISP. Most people on the net are assuming the former will happen (which won't save as much bandwidth, since the heavy usenet users are likely to get external services). Your best bet at this point seems to be to pray that Comcast sees the light with Usenet and just buys the old servers from @home. If you've lead a clean life they might even announce something one way or the other before the switch off date (coming RSN).

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.

Alledgely Comcast Also Using Spyware

[compumike]

Take a look at this thread from the Philadelphia Linux User Group. It sounds like the new software update that Comcast has asked its users to install contains spyware and changes internet settings...

So now they can track you from your own (Windows) machine, and also through their transparent proxy.

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?

Re:Tangent

[kubrick]

Hollywood knows fuckall about facts

Or, more to the point, facts don't make for exciting cinema.

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I work for a phone company

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

I work for a phone company.
No, we sure as hell DON'T have a database. (atleast in Canada). There are only 3 times we keep track.

1. As per customer request (traffic studies, getting prank calls)

2. As per warrant (court order required!)

3. For long distance billing. (we need to know how much to charge you)

local calls are not recorded - we have to add an option in your line programming for that - after meeting one of the above requirements.

Re:I work for a phone company

[pestihl]

I work for QWEST, which is a huge phone company here in the US. It is impossible to have digital switches and not be tracking the calls in some database somewhere.
Mostly because of one reason, Inter-State Inter-Lata rules and other smaller FCC phone line fair use rules. Qwest, Sprint, MCI and thousands of other businesses and sometimes counties own the phone lines and the switches. If I make a call, EVEN Out of country, and Go from Qwest owned phone lines to your Canada owned phone lines, Qwest and the Canadian owned company have to reach a agreement on what to charge for the usage, BY THE SECOND.
Third party companies house these charges. The company Qwest uses is called Telview, found at http://www.telveiw.com; it's called a TARIFF library, Telview makes their money by handling these charges and selling them to telecoms. EVERY digital switch in the world uses some system like this, or in conjunction with.
Now the database in play comes in not to track who you are calling so much. But because once your voice packet leaves Qwest lines it is not their propriety anymore and someone has to pay for the usage. Thus MCI can say you as a Qwest user, used X amount of trunk access on their lines, and charge Qwest X amount of dollars for those seconds. Qwest logs roughly about 140+ million phone calls a day, their system is considered by the FCC to be the definitively correct system, In audit type disputes The FCC will even use Qwest records as a third party advisor, because we track EVERYTHING, even all of the other telecoms, and almost all in the world. We just made it into Europe last summer. Anyway these millions and millions of minutes are charged at as low as -5 cent a minute to crazy 15+ cents a minute. It goes negative because of anti-monopoly issues regarding start up telecoms. Seconds are rounded and tracked to the nearest thousandth. On Qwest's system, an audit system HAS to be in place, this is part of FCC regulation crap, not to mention allows the FCC to more or less do their job. Generally that database doesn't have names in it. But the billing database that does have all your names in it if you subscriber to Qwest, private or not.... is a simple sql call away, it quite latterly lives in the same server farm... No stored procedures can link the two databases by LAW. Unless a search warrant is in place. Then with the officer there, we can link them. But the link has to be deleted also under the officer's super vision. Your records are tracked as up to two years, then deleted off, one month at a time. So two years ago to last month, we have no clue of whom you called, and are really glad to have a little more space.
The rule is if you can't use a blue box on your phone line, then you are traceable down to that specific phone. Digital Switch = Trackable.

p.s. For those who wonder, The system is Called NTU, Network Transaction Usage. We use Perl to gather data off the switches, not every switch is alike, including the os they run and the data needs to be parsed for the database. A HP/UX demon is used to process rules, and sort out how they should be poked into the database. While an oracle database floating on 36 partitions in a huge raid system is used to house the data while it lives. The machine NEVER goes down, even it does go down, monitor machines can quite literally mirror the drives and swap out so no data is ever lost. The coolest thing I've ever seen was my cowboy boss walk over to this multi-billion dollar a year machine and say, "Time to test the emergency backup units." These machines are located in other states altogether btw. Then he just pulls the power cord out of this rack mounted 8 by 8.

They aren't logging packets!

[evilpaul13]

No, they are just catching them, holding them for a few seconds, and then releasing them to make capped upload completely emulate dial-up.

...But, be on the look out for version 2.0 of this Comcast innovation!

The all new super ultra deluxe Dream [Packet] Catcher. Just like the Native American device only it captures packets and puts the user to sleep waiting for a reply to them.

Crypto.

[mindstrm]

Folks.. it shouldn't even have to be repeated, but it does.

When you send plaintext over the net, like HTTP reuqests..

YOU ARE SENDING PLAIN READABLE TEXT OVER A PUBLIC NETWORK.

Where is your expectation of privacy? That's right.. you don't really have one.

Passwords? HTTPS.. that's what the 'secure'part means you know.

Re:Crypto.

[Corgha]

IANAL, but I'd say you have just about as much expectation of privacy as you do sending unencrypted voice over the public telephone network, which is to say a substantial expectation.

Data on a switched network between two large ISPs is no easier to intercept than voice going between two large phone companies. In fact, I daresay it would be easier for me to tap my neighbor's phone than his cable modem (I could do it with a pair of pliers and some wire); it would, however, be illegal and IMO wrong for me to do so.

Bottom line: even though it may be *possible* for nefarious people to tap your phone, put bugs in your living room, or even implant a chip in your brain, you can still have an expectation of privacy. Not wrapping your house in tinfoil does not mean you're giving up your right to privacy, because your home is not a public forum. The wires between you and a web server do not constitute a public forum by any stretch of the imagination (even if the server happens to be hosting a public forum). Not using HTTPS does not consitute an abdication of privacy.

If you run a packet sniffer and look at other people's data, good luck convincing a judge that you weren't doing something bad under Section 2511 because the data wasn't encrypted.

"Hey, his front door wasn't locked, so I didn't really steal his TV..."
"Hey, the guy didn't use The Club, so this really isn't Grand Theft Auto..."
"Hey, she was wearing that short skirt; she deserved it..."

Experienced Inktomi Admin

[Phrack]

In a previous life, I was an experienced admin of Inktomi traffic server. It's simply a proxy cache. Yes, it can do many of the things mentioned.. insert ads? Sure... capture user into private portal hell? Sure. Track usage via logs? Sure. Do most care? Ehh.. not sure about that.

That previous life was working with a large Regional Bell company... the mere mention of selling of consumer info (even just anonymized web logs) caused the blood to run out of their faces. I don't think it'll happen there, but I don't make promises for anyone else. It's quite the panacea of information, even if just used internally.

BTW, Novell's proxy cache is actually faster, easier and quite a bit cheaper. Squid, while free, will likely never reach the same performance levels.

Logs off the caching device

[Kagato]

I've worked at a national ISP that did a trail of this hardware. The goal is to take the heat off upsteam link. It's fairly useful in a small market were your upstream has to cross a LATA incurring long distance charges.

The logs generated for this device is not anonymous. It's pretty much reads like an Apache log. Source and destination IPs for every request. I remeber wanting to get some sample data to see if we needed to take the Cache log into account for looking at out admin server traffic reports. Small town USA pretty much surfs over 50% porn.

At any rate. It's doubtful they use the cache box to collect internet traffic stats. Why? Well, basically, it's a money issue. Once you have the data great...except it's a freak'n huge sh*tload of data. If you want useful reporting you need to keep data for a year. Your're looking putting almost 500K into disk, CPU, and software. It's not worth it because you'd never recoup the money.

This does NOT mean your ISP doesn't sell your data. An ISP can make some serious cash by selling your data. ISP's can and DO enter into agreements with companies that collect data. However, the ISP wash their hands of the actual process. They let a 3rd party drop a Switch or a Bridge into a POP that directs traffic to a machine that will totally transparently collect data and start collecting checks.

Point is, the Cache is exactly what it appears. A Cache. It does collect data, but I've never heard of a National ISP use that data. They let a 3rd party company do all the work and collect the checks.

Re:Tangent actually explained.

[Afrosheen]

I think I smell an Uplink player here. In reality, you can't spoof, ANI will show your originating phone number and that number gets bounced around with each successive call. It is true, however, that starting a few conference calls, chaining them together, then calling Sears, explaining that you're new in Automotive and you need the operator, getting a dialtone, and continuing the chain of calls can slow things down a little.

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!

FUD?

[dreamchaser]

I don't doubt that this could happen, but I would hardly worry about a post on a message board or mailing list. Yes, we need to be vigilant, but let us get some independant verification from a trusted source. Better yet, why doesn't one of you who has Comcast as a service provider write them a letter and ask? CC the FCC and the Better Business Bureau if you feel it necessary.

Something about this just smells like FUD to me.

Transparent Proxies

[frost22]

So they have transparent web caches. The company I work for does this as well. And it sucks big time, for a number of reasons:

• we have all kinds of quality problems. There's a shitload of web apps out there that break with transparent caches, one way or the other, and often in subtile ways. There's even an RFC about some of them.
• when metering traffic independently of the cache statistics we found that we actually did not save any bandwidth worth mentioning. The statistics for the caches of course say different, but interface counters don't lie :-)
• customer satisfaction goes down the drain. The reason is, even if there is no problem with the caches, people blame any problem with internet and web site availability on the caches - and thus on us.

But, no, we have nothing in place to collect and evaluate logs. It's just much too much data right now to handle or even store it professionally. OTOH, given technological advances, this kind of storage and evalutaion probably will be trivial a few years from now. So the tendency is definitely dangerous.

f.