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Charter Is Latest ISP To Plan Wiretapping Via DPI
Charter Communications has begun sending letters to its customers informing them that, in the name of an "enhanced user experience," it will begin spying on their traffic and inserting targeted ads. This sounds almost indistinguishable from what Phorm proposed doing in the UK. Lauren Weinstein issues a call to arms.
IBM:Apple::Comcast:Charter.
Proof by Advertising follows:
IBM: Think.
Apple: Think Different.
Comcast: Suck.
Charter: Suck Different.
The "enhanced user experience" is nothing more than a smoke screen to spy on you, and get more ad revenue for their own personal gain. It's utter bullshit. Recently COX communications implimented nation wide DNS poisoning similiar to what versign does on domains it can't resolve.
http://support.cox.com/sdccommon/asp/contentredirect.asp?sprt_cid=e047dc81-18c4-485f-bcf3-1263d0b7b904
How to opt out of the "enhanced user experience"
How does injecting ad's into my browser "enhance" my experience? Give me more fucking bandwith you money grubbing cheap fucks, and that MIGHT enhance my experience.. I hate them.
Can someone tell me whether Charter is inserting any ads? If they are, I want to complain to the Attorney General and to my CongressCritters about felony copyright infringement.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Some things call for the proverbial nuclear response: boycotts, lawsuits, all-out opposition. This is one of them. Once one of these corporations gets away with this, it's game over for those of us who want a corner of our lives that doesn't have some lying prick forcing his way into it to sell us something, spin the information we get and otherwise screw with our reality in a way that works to somebody else's advantage at our expense.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
If anyone is using charter (or just suspicious of things), please visit our tripwire server:
http://vancouver.cs.washington.edu/, to (hopefully) detect in-flight page changes.
Test your net with Netalyzr
MP3s in the incoming folder? "Charter put them there."
Child porn in the cache? "Charter put it there."
Nuclear weapon plans in email? "Charter sent it."
Seriously, WTF are they thinking? Do they really want to be named as co-defendants in every criminal or civil case brought against their customers? Because if they modified my incoming data and I was later called in to account for anything, you can bet my first line of defense would be to blame it on them.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
OK, let's cut out the middle man here, and go straight to what Charter is saying:
Translated
So, tell me, how exactly is reading my packets that much different from "spying" on me? I expect my phone carrier to not listen to my calls to decide what inserts they should put into my next bill, because telcos are supposed to have an arms length relationship with your data.
This is not nearly as inflammatory and knee-jerk as you make it out to be. They actually are reading what you do.
And, for the record, it can't be "completely anonymous" if they know to put it into my web-page. They may claim that they can't tie it to you, but, if they know to give you an ad for Depends Undergarments, at some point, they decided that you needed to receive that targeted ad.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
When ISPs can actually MODIFY data that does not belong to them, a SERIOUS boundary has been broken.
It's like the telephone company talking in place of someone on the phone.
"Hey mom" "Hi Mike, how are you?"
becomes:
"Hey mom" "HI MIKE, GET VIAGRA NOW FOR $3.99/20mg!"
A representative will be with you shortly. You have been connected to TTM Mike .
TTM Mike : Hi this is Mike from Charter. How may I help you today?
Robert Hafner: I read an article online, and the followed it to the Charter webpage, which states that Charter is going to be monitoring my surfing habits and placing ads into pages I'm viewing. I am wondering how soon this will happen to me personally.
Robert Hafner: http://connect.charter.com/landing/op1.html
TTM Mike : I do apologize but let me transfer you over toour internet support line.
TTM Mike has left the session.
Please wait while we find an agent from the CHAT - DUMA - HSD Support department to assist you.
You have been connected to TTD Grah .
TTD Grah : Hi, this is Grah. Thank you for contacting Charter's High Speed Internet support. How may I be of assistance to you today?
Robert Hafner: I read an article online, and the followed it to the Charter webpage, which states that Charter is going to be monitoring my surfing habits and placing ads into pages I'm viewing. I am wondering how soon this will happen to me personally.
TTD Grah : One moment please.
Robert Hafner: http://connect.charter.com/landing/op1.html Contains the information
Robert Hafner: that I am basing this question off of.
Robert Hafner: As well as http://consumerist.com/5008801/charter-to-begin-tracking-users-searches-and-inserting-targeted-ads
TTD Grah : Yes, that is our new update.
TTD Grah : One moment please as I download the document.
TTD Grah : Charter has formed a partnership with an industry-leader in online advertising, NebuAd (www.nebuad.com). NebuAd, through their advertising network, will display targeted advertisements to Charter High-Speed® Internet customers while they are surfing the Web. NebuAd does not collect and use personally identifiable information to deliver advertising. Customers will not see more ads - just ads that are more relevant to their interests that have been expressed through their web-surfing activity.
TTD Grah : The feature will be activated automatically for Charter HSI customers beginning in June 2008 in the following four Charter markets:
Newtown, Connecticut
Fort Worth, Texas
San Luis Obispo, California
Oxford, Massachusetts
Robert Hafner: So the ads are placed directly into websites I would normally view?
Robert Hafner: How do I opt-out for an entire household, with multiple computers and browsers?
Robert Hafner: Currently the only way to opt-out is by placing a cookie under each browser of each account of each computer, which is absolutely insane.
TTD Grah : The technology can actually often distinguish between different users on a shared computer and, therefore, can serve different ads to different users. Only a portion of the ads you see will be a function of the enhanced service - you will still see some ads that are served based on other criteria.
Robert Hafner: The question was were are those ads being placed- are they replacing other ads on websites, for instance?
Robert Hafner: And if so, how is the owner of the actual website going to be compensated?
TTD Grah : This site may appear depending on what are you trying to view online.
TTD Grah : This site will give you options on what to have according to what you need.
Robert Hafner: What site are you referring to?
TTD Grah : Say for example, you are surfing because you wish to purchase shoes online, this site will pop up and give you options to chose from.
TTD Grah : That is how it works.
TTD Grah : That is how it works.
TTD Grah : The site will not pop up everytime you go online.
Robert Hafner: So this only affects my traffic to
I currently work for a cable company that is setting up this same kind of system. The only people that know what ads are being replaced are the people controlling the ad server, which is not the ISP. We (the ISP) are being paid to set up a black box that we will route ALL port 80 traffic through. Unless you opt out, which I'm not even sure will work properly. So the ad people can be doing all kinds of things with that data. Granted, they can't link the IP Address to a customer since they have no access to our provisioning server (and I'm pretty certain every last one of us Systems Engineers would quit before allowing that to happen). But they can be doing whatever they want with that traffic and we are none the wiser. Its such a black box, the ad company does all the monitoring on the black box. We are apparently the only company that even requested that we be allowed to monitor up/down and traffic status. The real problem is that we are setting up this extra router (it is another layer 3 hop) that also acts as a server and will delay any port 80 traffic. And we're pretty much allowing them full access to do as they will with the hostage packets. We're not checking. And if someone isn't happy with what their site looks like, we'll probably just route that one around the server, still pushing everything else through. I hope Google employees are checking their AdSense images to make sure that ads are actually from Google and that they are paying Google. As shady as this whole thing is, I expect that we will have legit ads removed, but leave the 'src' of the 'img' tag.