Mediacom Using DPI To Hijack Searches, 404 Errors

Verteiron writes "Cable company Mediacom recently began using deep packet inspection to redirect 404 errors, Google and Bing searches to their own, ad-laden 'search engine.' Despite repeated complaints from customers, Mediacom continues this connection hijacking even after the user has opted out of the process. Months after the problem was first reported, the company seems unwilling or unable to fix it and has even experimented with injecting their own advertising into sites like Google. How does one get a company infamous for its shoddy customer service and comfortable, state-wide cable monopolies to act on an issue like this?"

Comments

HTTPS

[The MAZZTer]

Can't touch this!

Re:HTTPS

[betterunixthanunix]

$10 says that ISPs will encourage their customers to use special "installation disks," which add an ISP's signing certificate to the list of trusted CAs and then start using MITM attacks. It takes more than HTTPS, it takes users who both care and understand what they are doing.

Re:HTTPS

[Palmsie]

When have users ever cares or understood what they are doing? This is the entire premise of the Apple machine. They assume you don't; look how popular that has become.

Re:HTTPS

[The MAZZTer]

The web will likely need to go IPv6 first. When you connect to an HTTPS server, the certificate stuff takes place BEFORE your browser even tells the server what [sub]domain you are accessing, so you usually need a dedicated IP for each [sub]domain so the certificates can always match up.

Re:HTTPS

[cultiv8]

Yes they can. From SonicWall's Press Release:

SonicOS 5.6 adds a new deep packet inspection (DPI) engine for SSL encrypted traffic, which has increasingly become a blind spot in many firewall, content filtering and data leak protection schemes today. Bad guys have begun using encryption technologies against the very security communities that made them popular, using encryption to avoid the HTTPS protocol to bypass filters and expose networks to malware attacks.

Re:HTTPS

[betterunixthanunix]

....and yet, Mediacom is hijacking search queries. Why is adding an MITM attack any more illegal than hijacking the queries in the first place?

Re:HTTPS

[david.emery]

Someone please mod as troll.

Re:HTTPS

[sverdlichenko]

No they can't. HTTPS inspection works only if user installed "trusted" certificate on his computer. This can be done in corporate environment, but not for home users.

Re:HTTPS

[Scott Laird]

That's not exactly true; SNI allows for HTTPS multihoming, and it's supported by the HTTPS on pretty much every modern platform, *except* for Windows XP. Browsers that use Window's HTTPS code (most of them, IIRC) can't cope with SNI on XP, so no one actually uses it anywhere yet.

Re:HTTPS

[Technician]

Ad one more step. Use another DNS server or put the Real Google HTTPS IP address in the hosts file so the ISP can't redirect it with a corrupt DNS server.

Re:HTTPS

[erroneus]

No, he's essentially correct.

Those days are essentially behind us, generally speaking, but you can't tell me that you never met someone who proudly stated "I'm computer illiterate" before? The primary draw of Mac OS was "it's so easy!" And it was! It also meant it would take a back seat to most of the newest and cutting-edge stuff, but the "easy" crowd didn't care about cutting-edge anyway... sounded dangerous after all.

Like it or not, "easy" was a primary marketing point for Apple. And seriously, even today, what about Apple stuff is hard, difficult or complicated? You can still "uninstall" a program by removing its icon! (Not true in the case of Microsoft Office, but that's Microsoft ain't it?) Sure you can get "into the tech" with Mac OS X if you want to now, but still.

I'm guessing you are an Apple user and you somehow took that personally. Aren't you an exception to the rule though? After spending time supporting Mac in a business environment, I can safely say that Apple users are less technically sophisticated than PC users. I didn't say "dumber" just less technically sophisticated. To insert the old car analogy, Apple users drive "automatics" while Windows users drive "standards." The result of the difference is that Windows users end up with knowledge like what a swap file is used for or that a DLL is conflicting after a recent installation of software. PC users learn more because they experience more problems.

Now, are you STILL offended?

Re:HTTPS

[mjeffers]

No they can't. HTTPS inspection works only if user installed "trusted" certificate on his computer. This can be done in corporate environment, but not for home users.

That makes it sound like all an ISP would have to do is to put this certificate into an installer that provides it's users with "valuable connection tools and internet utilities". Ship a few CDs to customers and you'll get a large number of people installing and clicking through whatever dialogs pop up because they think they'll need to in order to get online.

Re:HTTPS

[david.emery]

Short answer, yes. When I'm working on software/systems architecture standards, etc, there is a disproportionate number of Macs around the room. The value of the Mac as a platform is that it can be simple, but that it also has the full power of Unix underneath. That makes the platform appealing to both those who don't want to have to mess with their computers (like my mother) and to those of us who routinely use "su" and other such facilities. A lot of what I know about working on Unix machines fully transfers over to the Mac.

Making a machine easy to use is not necessarily correlated with ignorant users. A strong platform should support users at all levels.

Re:HTTPS

[gstoddart]

When have users ever cares or understood what they are doing? This is the entire premise of the Apple machine. They assume you don't; look how popular that has become.

Well, maybe not fucking around with things like the registry is a really good thing. Every time I see an MS article that starts off with regedit, it's pretty easy to see why the users don't want to care or understand how to do the really arcane shit. That was a crappy system when they introduced it, and it's not really any better now.

If the option came down to a "hand-holding" Apple experience, an annoying and frustrating Windows experience, or an arcane voo-doo experience with Linux ... I'm betting the overwhelming majority of users are going to opt for the simplest possible experience. I'd opt for it, and I've worked in the industry for 15 years or so.

Users just don't care or understand about things like CA's or trying to keep their ISP from being able to launch a MITM attack against them -- for the same reasons that users of the telephone system don't need to know about the PBX and other infrastructure technologies. They treat it like their car -- "skinny pedal go fast".

Like it or not, the ISP is treated like a phone company -- as long as they're free to fuck with your packet streams, it's happening at a level that most users will never understand. The internet has become ubiquitous, and at a certain point, even people with some technical know-how either don't know or acre about all of the details of what's happening at that level.

Re:HTTPS

[_0xd0ad]

And if they're especially devious they'd just block everything that looks like HTTPS traffic until the user installs the certificate.

Re:HTTPS

[gmack]

Just a note for people running PCI-DSS compliant environments: I was told by my PCI auditor that even though PCI-DSS requires the use of an IDS that does DPS and even though it's rendered useless by the fact that all of my traffic is encrypted. I'm still not permitted to setup any sort of decryption on the firewall.

Re:HTTPS

[yuna49]

Like it or not, the ISP is treated like a phone company

No, the problem is that ISPs are not treated like a phone company. They're not regulated as common-carriers. The FCC considered re-categorizing ISPs as a "Title II" telecommunications service, but backed away after Congressional opposition. Now the Commission is proposing a "third way" which seems unlikely to satisfy either the ISPs or their critics. Here's a quick summary: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/06/fcc-outlines-new-third-way-internet-regulatory-plan-will-spli/

To my mind, ISPs shouldn't be able to process traffic based on anything other than packet headers. Their job is to take a packet I create and deliver it to its intended destination. (Yes, yes, QOS, etc. Whatever is in the headers is fine by me.) DPI equipment should be banned. Anything else offers too many opportunities for censorship and manipulation.

Re:HTTPS

[I(rispee_I(reme]

'encourage their customers to use special "installation disks,"'? More like require. EVERY time there's a power outage in my area, I have to install AT&T's shitware in a VM just to get the DSL working. Of course they swear it's a problem on my end, caused by the power outage, but kicking the power on the surge protector does not reproduce the problem.

The thing that galls me is that unwitting customers are installing the crap because AT&T redirects all traffic to a webpage that says "THE INTERNET NEEDS THIS SOFTWARE TO WORK". To top it off, it doesn't come with a way to uninstall it. And of course the internet works fine without it, hopefully I didn't need to tell you that.

I have spent hours on the phone with their "support" and they all claim that a) the problem is on my end, and b) they can't give me the internet I've paid them for until I install their shitty software. Not "won't", "can't". You can google motivesmart if you are an AT&T dsl user.

Re:HTTPS

[gstoddart]

No, the problem is that ISPs are not treated like a phone company. They're not regulated as common-carriers.

Sorry, yes. Exactly correct ... I meant that to the end user, the ISP is treated the same as the phone company. It's infrastructure, or at least, that's how people think of it.

Heck, in a lot of cases, your ISP probably is the same as your phone company -- or at least your cable. In my case, it's all 3, plus my cell phones.

To my mind, ISPs shouldn't be able to process traffic based on anything other than packet headers. Their job is to take a packet I create and deliver it to its intended destination

I couldn't agree more.

Re:HTTPS

[ComputerGeek01]

I've seen this term thrown around this thread a lot: MITM. This stands for Man In The Middle, a MITM attack is when an entity, a person or group of people, takes your connection to what ever host and forwards it through their machine. As the service provider MediaCom IS ALREADY THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE. Wikipedia doesn't have an informative article on them but they appear to be a Tier 1 provider so you require their infrastructure to use the internet, that means their systems, their cables and most importantly their DNS tables.

They see your IP connecting to some website, they also see the traffic to and from your machine. They don't need to break any kind of code and read every packet they only need to filter out the legit packets and insert their own. You and a hundred other posts on this thread are over thinking this.

Re:HTTPS

[SuricouRaven]

Slashdot is anti-Apple now. It wasn't always this way. They were even seen as champions once, fighting for Unix against the otherwise unstoppable monster of Microsoft. Then they grew, and were no longer the David fighting the MS Goliath - they were just another big company embracing DRM, locking down their technology to keep tinkerers from hacking it, trying to control everything to increase profit and finding new ways to prevent interoperability and keep competitors out. Just another evil empire now. The final straw was when they introduced the app store, but for hardware that was locked down and designed to be incapable of executing any code not explicitly signed and approved by Apple - to a community of open-source enthusiasts, this is one of the worst crimes a company can commit.

Re:HTTPS

[Steeltoe]

Not really. "MITM-attack" may mean many different kinds of attack, and is not usually referred to as a breah of network, but whatever malicious purposes such a position as being in the middle can be abused for. Of course, the "Man" is found in the "middle" of your communication between your hopefully trustworthy partner. However, "MITM-attack" doesn't specify wether the "Man" was already there or not, just that "he or she's in the middle" and is doing somethiing they're not supposed to. The connection being HTTP, well, who can blame them? Who uses HTTP today when there are so many better options? Oh yeah, the entire fuckin world! Who's stupid now?

Basically, an ISP fuckin with your packets, is entirely within the definition of MITM-attack. An ISP doing this is in fact in breach of your trust, and has by doing such, gotten a proven track-record of untrustworthiness.

File an Anti-Trust Complaint

[techsoldaten]

File an anti-trust complaint and break up the monopoly. That is what those laws are for.

Re:File an Anti-Trust Complaint

[CharlieHedlin]

Most cable companies are most heavily regulated by local franchise agreements. If I had Mediacom doing this in my area I would probably have to start attending city council meetings to speak against them at every opportunity. I have a terribly despised ISP in my neighborhood, but they have recently upgraded their network and have provided me with great service (I believe they do NXDomain crap, but I use OpenDNS. They do it too but I have at least chosen them).

Re:Get another ISP!

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

I'd hope Google would sue them for copyright violation, changing their webpage in transit, and collect damages per changed page. Additionally they create confusion by diluting Google's trademarks (and those of anyone else whose page is changed). I mean this violates so many laws it isn't funny.

You could serve them with a DMCA cease and decist notice as a normal website author. Fight fire with fire.

Complain to google

[nedlohs]

Rant and rave about shitty their website is with all the damn flashing advertisements at the top of the screen. If enough people do this, then google might actually take a look instead of ignoring the idiot user complaining about the non-existant.

Then given google is an advertising company they are likely to send the lawyers to stop said ISP from messing with their bread and butter.

Sue them

[mangu]

What they are doing is fraud. Sue them and use *AA scales to calculate compensatory damages. Assume each false-404 corresponds to one music download, charge the normal $75000 per song.

Simple

[haystor]

"How does one get a company infamous for its shoddy customer service and comfortable, state-wide cable monopolies to act on an issue like this?""

More regulation, obviously.

Re:Simple

[h4rr4r]

Not more, just better.
Regulation Number 1. He who owns the fiber/copper may not provide service over it.
Regulation Number 2. He who owns the fiber/copper must sell access to all comers for the same price.
Regulation Number 3. He who provides the service may not own media companies.
Regulation Number 4. If anyone gains more than 51% of the market, split the company in two.

Re:Simple

[maxwell demon]

Regulation Number 1. He who owns the fiber/copper may not provide service over it.

Evasion Strategy Number 1: Make two companies, owned both by you (through sufficient indirections through holdings etc. to make this non-obvious). One holds the fiber/copper, one provides the service.

Regulation Number 2. He who owns the fiber/copper must sell access to all comers for the same price.

Evasion Strategy Number 2: Have that equal price so high that nobody will be interested, except for your service company (which is always on the edge of bancruptcy, which doesn't hurt, because you get your money from that other company; indeed, being at the edge of bancruptcy may even help in exploiting the workers, not to mention that it's probably useful for tax reasons, too).

Regulation Number 3. He who provides the service may not own media companies.

See Evasion Strategy Number 1.

Regulation Number 4. If anyone gains more than 51% of the market, split the company in two.

OK, then have several companies "competing" with each other, both owned by you (see Evasion Strategy Number 1).

Re:Simple

[h4rr4r]

This is why you make duck laws. If it quacks like and duck and looks like a duck, its a duck.

I would also highly suggest the service company be run like the post office.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean "less likely to damage its trusted cargo than either of the major private carriers"? Sure, why not? I would have used the Interstate Highway system as my analogy, but whatever boats your float.

Re:Simple

[h4rr4r]

Slow, 3 days across country for a couple dollars is slow?
They are the cheapest and lose/break less than the other carriers.
They only operate as a loss as they are forbidden to raise prices except for with inflation. Since we fudge they inflation number they are stuck in the middle.

I am not sure when Americans decided unions were evil, but I enjoy 40hour weeks and 5 day work weeks. Without unions we would all be virtual slaves.

Re:Simple

[scot4875]

You have statistics to back up your anecdotes, I assume? No? You're just spewing bullshit?

Here's the closest thing I could find to statistics that compare the major shipping companies and the USPS:

USPS is actually better.

The rest of the links I could find were all just "U(S)PS/FedEx damaged my package!" bitching.

--Jeremy

Re:Simple

[scot4875]

I love it when people suggest possible fixes to the system and freetards come in and say that the best solution is to do nothing; conveniently ignoring things like child slave labor and exploitive employment practices of the past that were only solved by -- you guessed it -- restricting the free market. (the reply... "But those markets weren't really free! The children and employees weren't free to make choices, and if they had been, they would have never chosen those conditions! The market was already distorted by <insert some excuse> and those conditions no longer exist today!")

The free market is there to solve a problem. It only solves the problem in the way you want if you define the parameters of how you want it solved. It's called a constraint satisfaction problem. It will certainly find a solution. Whether that solution is worth shit or not depends ENTIRELY on the rules we set for it.

--Jeremy

Re:Get another ISP!

[TheRaven64]

Came to this story to post exactly the same thing. If you take someone else's copyrighted work (i.e. any web page that is not explicitly placed into the public domain) and create a derived work (that page with adverts), which you then distribute for profit (ad revenue), then you are committing wilful copyright infringement for commercial gain. You can be liable for a statutory penalty of up to $150,000 per work (at least per site, possibly per page) in the USA.

FTC Complaint

[hotsauce]

In the short-term, an FTC Complaint (https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/) works wonders due to their power to impose fines for every complaint.

File early, file often.

Re:FTC Complaint

[BigT]

Watch Mediacom block that site for their customers next. As well as any complaint site for the FCC/franchise authority/state attorney general's office/etc.

Re:FTC Complaint

[Nemesisghost]

Watch Mediacom block that site for their customers next. As well as any complaint site for the FCC/franchise authority/state attorney general's office/etc.

Before all the other hoopla about Net Neutrality became a CNN talking point, it was issues like this that caused me to want stronger regulations on ISPs. How long before other ISPs start doing the same thing? Will Mediacom start blocking /. because we exposed & brought this nefarious practice to light? What if this made it to CNN or some other major news outlet? If you don't already support Net Neutrality, maybe you ought to start thinking about it. It is the Free Speech Issue of our time.

Re:Get another ISP!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It would probably be unethical to suggest arson, so I won't.

Re:Get another ISP!

[ejtttje]

Good luck finding one in your local monopoly. (missed that part?) Even in my major metro area, the next best choice is an also-ran DSL service from Verizon at a fraction of the speed for almost as much money.

This is why we should just give up this free-market farce and regulate the ISPs as utilities, with standards on purity (e.g. not modifying traffic) and equity (not censoring traffic from conglomerate competitors). AKA net neutrality.

Slashdot Affected?

[VortexCortex]

So, is this the reason why the Slashdot a banner ad: "Steven Feuerstein: Java Developers Should Know PL/SQL." is stretched to be the nearly size of a full screen, and disproportionately too? <checks source> Nope...

Hey slashdot devs, Here's an ad for ya: "VortexCortex: Web Developers Should Know CSS/Algebra!"

Not once have I disabled ads, satisfied to give Slashdot whatever meager income the ads provide, but this has forced my hand...

report them for providing illegal services.

[GuldKalle]

I'm not sure, but wouldn't this exclude them from common-carrier protections? If so, it should be fairly easy to make them provide you with illegal services (think gambling, not CP - no reason to get FBI on your ass).

Re:report them for providing illegal services.

[ewieling]

USA ISPs are not "common carriers" under the law, no matter how much people wish they are.

According to the article...

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

It's not exactly what the submission says. If you enter search data in the address bar it may redirect you to Mediacom's servers whether you opt in or not. However if you use the search bar it won't redirect you. This is considered unacceptable by the person who wrote the giant post in the "deep packet inspection..." link above. I'm not going to debate whether this is unacceptable or not, but there is a workaround - just use the search bar. As someone who does not do searches in the address bar that seems OK to me.

Re:According to the article...

[Mr. Arbusto]

That isn't the problem.

Being a MediaCom customer I've played with this a few times in the past, complained when the opt out didn't work, and complained about it to people locally. Working for a company that make DPI appliances it was kinda fun to see it in action, but kinda scary to see it on the public internet. CenturyTel also does this exact same thing.

It scans all HTTP traffic looking for 404 errors. So if I go to http://boingboing.net/4in0in4 It will intercept the servers 404 page and redirect to to a mediacom portal site with my 404 URL as the search term and ads all over.

Re:According to the article...

[Vegemeister]

Does wget still return the proper exit code?

Wire Fraud?

[lobsterGun]

Wire Fraud:

Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If the violation affects a financial institution, such person shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.

A customer is asking for one web page, mediacom is substituting another for monetary gain. How is this not wire fraud?

Re:Wire Fraud?

[Rob the Bold]

Wire Fraud:

Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If the violation affects a financial institution, such person shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.

A customer is asking for one web page, mediacom is substituting another for monetary gain. How is this not wire fraud?

Market cap.

File a Complaint with the State Attorney General

[fallen1]

that Mediacom, by using this technique to redirect certain traffic, are in fact violating 18 U.S.C. 1030 (Fraud and Related Activity in Connection with Computers) by committing just that -- FRAUD. If I go to Google to search for an explanation of a math problem but all of my traffic is routed through Mediacom's system first and I then get responses from Mediacom that looks like they are coming from Google - that is fraud. Pure and simple. I _trust_ Google (for the most part) to give me the information I am seeking. I don't trust my ISP that is redirecting traffic and injecting their own ads to increase their profit margins. The ISP exists solely to move data, un-accosted except for "traffic shaping", across their wires. If I type in www.google.com and start a search, by all that is holy and unholy my data had better be going to Google and not be redirected to point B before reaching Google -- isn't that, technically, a man-in-the-middle attack? Which is also a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030 I believe.

I hate that the United States is lawsuit happy but, let's face it, hitting these assholes in their pocketbooks are probably the only thing that will get them to cease and desist. Even then they'll keep trying or buy immunity or something. Until then though, I'm down with cleaning out their ill-gotten and misdirected coffers.

NOTE: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

Re:How it doesn't works

[yoghurt]

I have a great solution for reducing spam. Don't reply and it will stop. If you don't buy any h3rb4l V1agr4, they eventually notice and stop.

They won't ever notice. For example, my not buying Sony products over the past dozen years is of no discernible impact to Sony. I haven't bought a Dell, but that isn't due to any problem I have with them. How is Sony to infer that I don't care for them, while Dell I just haven't bought from yet?

Solution: Use a different DNS server

[level_headed_midwest]

I have Mediacom's internet service and the solution is to use a different DNS server other than the ones Mediacom provides. I use Level3's DNS servers (4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.3) for my DNS lookups and I do not get any redirects. You can either manually set the DNS servers on your computer or set them at the router.

Re:Solution: Use a different DNS server

[Frozen-Solid]

This doesn't work. I'm on Mediacom and use Google DNS. None the less if I type in http://validsite.com/invalidurlgoeshere/ rather than being served a proper 404 I get forwarded to Mediacom's private search engine. They're using deep packet inspection to hijack any default apache or iis 404 response from a website and redirect it to themselves. Level3 DNS, Google DNS, and Open DNS all work to fix the issue of my failed DNS queries being hijacked, but it doesn't fix 404s.

Re:Solution: Use a different DNS server

[Jellodyne]

Google's DNS servers at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 are also good free, standards compliant DNS servers.

Re:Solution: Use a different DNS server

[level_headed_midwest]

Ah, I forgot, you also need to add "127.0.0.1 assist.mediacomcable.com" to your /etc/hosts. assist.mediacomcable.com is the server that does the page display for their NXDOMAIN hijacking. Adding the line to /etc/hosts and not using Mediacom's DNS servers results in a "page not found" error when having a 404 error.

Re:Get another ISP!

[erroneus]

It is usually not "their" ad server. Advertisers do not trust content providers and prefer to count the hits themselves. This means that it is most likely that the ads being inserted are not on the ISP's servers. The ISP's server are inserting code that directs the client to download ad content which, in turn, generates revenue for the ISP.

Would "adblock" work? Yeah, probably.

Re:Vote with your feet

[maxwell demon]

The only way companies will truly reform is when they risk losing customers. Stop complaining but cancel your contract and tell them (and the rest of the world) why.

Well, if you are without internet connection, it's a bit harder to tell the world why. :-)

Re:Exactly

[GameboyRMH]

Is it possible to use Tor for http and no Tor for https?

I'd say that's the opposite of what you should be doing if you're worried about honeypot Tor exit nodes. You should run HTTPS over Tor and use Perspectives to make sure you aren't getting MITM'ed. Don't run unencrypted stuff over Tor that you don't want anyone else to see.

Re:Exactly

[mlts]

https anywhere is an excellent suggestion, as it shuts down Phorm-like attacks down.

I'd recommend some additional items as well:

1: If you can do this on your router, I'd find the IPs for the dodgy ISP's ad servers, and block [1] them.

2: Adblock, Ghostery, and BetterPrivacy are a must. At least Adblock, because this protects against incoming malicious software far more than any AV utility. Until ad rotating sites take responsibility and stop allowing clients to serve up malicious code, blocking ads is a security measure.

3: Consider a VPN service. I use one for my mobile devices when using open wireless networks not just to stop FireSheep like attacks, but to keep my personal traffic just between me and the VPN provider.

4: PeerBlock plus iBlocklist. This isn't just for people wanting to infringe on IP, but there are also well maintained IP lists for malicious sites, ad sites, and nasty stuff in general.

[1]: Drop packets going from your machine to the ad server, reject packets going from the adserver to you. The reason behind this -- the drop sends an error packet back, telling your machine that there is an issue, and not to keep waiting until a timeout.

Re:Get another ISP!

[jandersen]

This is why we should just give up this free-market farce and regulate the ISPs as utilities, with standards on purity (e.g. not modifying traffic) and equity (not censoring traffic from conglomerate competitors). AKA net neutrality.

Why not go the full mile, and decide that the internet is essential infrastructure and should be provided by the state? I know all the usual arguments, "the government is evil per definition", and "all public efforts are big, bumbling wastes of time and money". Both are disingenious, bordering on fraudulent - the state is NOT the government, just for one thing, and most of government is not the politicians; and even politicians are not all thoroughly evil, believe it or not.

And, as a matter of fact, most state driven projects are not all that bad - some are even highly succesful. It's just that bad news sell better and of course, it mets the expectations of the readers that "governments are evil and useless" - why else would they ask us to pay tax?

Re:Get another ISP!

[Hazel Bergeron]

Couple of things:

(1) robots.txt isn't a legal protocol. Computers don't form contracts, particularly not implicit ones by virtue of the absence of some data associated with a private convention. A lot of what Google does is understood as technically contrary to the law in some countries, to the extent that in some places (e.g. UK) the government has been lobbied by Google to extend the notion of fair use;

(2) Even if robots.txt had some force, the absence of robots.txt conventionally allows for crawling and indexing. I don't see why this can be reasonably understood to extend to all the caching and thumbnailing Google does.

Re:Get another ISP!

[KDR_11k]

Yes, more regulation is the answer. These companies have been granted a monopoly and should be restrained to the point where they can't do any damage. Deregulating would just cause trouble with laying wires.

Re:Get another ISP!

[Khyber]

Actually you're wrong. There's a difference between a legal frame injection and illegal redirection.

http://attackvector.lescigales.org/2009/05/06/178/

Go educate yourself. And yes, there IS a law against it.

Re:Installation disks

[b4dc0d3r]

I got Bellsouth DSL, because cable was not laid on my side of the street. I got the modem and an installation disk. I called and said I was not running an installation disk, please tell me what I need to do special for your connection, if anything.

They said they understood, and I can do it at this web address. The website was basically blank. Are you using internet explorer? No of course I'm not. Well the site only runs in IE. I should have been suspicious, but figured they are idiots.

ActiveX did exactly what the install disk would have done as soon as I opened the page in IE. I'm still finding bits of things. Motive*, MCCI*, att-nap. Of course, bellsouth was bought by ATT, and I was not pleased about finding that out either.

Re:Government created this monopoly

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

No, the alternative was to regulate the monopoly as if were a monopoly, as opposed to pretending there were free market forces affecting the company.

Re:Common Carriers

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

Good thing they aren't common carriers, then.

Re:Vote with your feet

[Cor-cor]

That would be wonderful. Here's an anecdote as to why this plan fails for me in particular.

I unfortunately have Mediacom in my area. They've effectively got it made so that you can't do this. First, they charge $20/month more (I believe it was) for a non-contract plan, which adds up, and so now I'll get hit with a $200+ cancellation fee if I try switching. I also pay for an internet/cable package even though I don't want cable because it is cheaper than the same speed internet by itself. A lot of the things they do don't make much sense until you look at it from their point of view - they've got you over a barrel and are going to take as much of your money as they can.

The main problem, alluded to in the summary, is that there really is no other option. When I moved to my current town, I tried finding something else - called their main competitor Qwest up, no service in my area. The only other option was Iowa Telecom, which went under and got bought out within a couple months of when I was trying to set up services. The new company was not in the phone book, did not have a functional website, and I think I finally found their number in a newspaper ad or something. It was going to be about $10 less for substantially slower DSL, and was going to take 3-4 weeks to set up if I remember correctly. Mediacom does take 2-3 weeks to make a house call. And as bad as Mediacom's service had been in my experience, everyone from the area told me Iowa Telecom was worse somehow. In fact there are many who get their internet through a cellular company because a wireless dongle with tiny bandwidth caps and an expensive data plan is superior to Mediacom in many ways.

I live out in the ass end of Iowa in a small town where I'm new without many friends. We are actually too far from every single major city to pick up any television stations, and only get a couple radio stations consistently. I was starved for entertainment before they got my internet hooked up and had a lot more trouble keeping up with friends from school and whatnot. Don't get me wrong, I hate this damn ad page that they're talking about. I hate getting hung up on while on hold with customer service/sales/anybody I call there. I hate getting an envelope stuffed full of ads every month so that I nearly throw away my bill with all of the crap I don't want. I would love to switch from Mediacom, there's just nowhere to go.

Re:Get another ISP!

[SuricouRaven]

You're both right, actually. In the US anyway. It is a natural monopoly, yes - that is why competing cable companies rarely serve the same area. Once the first gets established, the second has no incentive to chase the same customers. The very high initial investment of cables makes it non-viable to enter a market unless the customers have no other alternatives. But it is also a regulated monopoly: Many local authorities (And I'm taking county or municipal level here, not state or federal) do grant service monopolies.

Re:Get another ISP!

[SuricouRaven]

There was an incident some years ago when one of the ISPs (I forget which) started redirecting name-not-found DNS queries to it's own ad-filled error page. An incidential effect of which was to crash HP printers - some obsolete models were trying to connect to a disused update server to fetch updates. When they were instead directed to the ad-page, they did as they were programmed and tried to update. Fortunatly they didn't go so far as to install an ad-banner in place of their firmware, but it still resulted in very difficult to diagnose printer failures. I've been trying to find details on google, but can't seem to dig it up any more.