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The Five Levels of ISP Evil
schwit1 writes "Recently a number of ISPs have been caught improperly redirecting end-user traffic in order to generate affiliate payments, using a system from Paxfire. A class action lawsuit has been filed against Paxfire and one of the ISPs. This is a serious allegation, but it's the tip of the iceberg. I'm not sure if everyone understands the levels of sneakiness that service providers can engage in."
But decided that I had nothing really pertinent to say--ISPs doing evil? That ranks up there with Banks collecting money and M$ collecting technology--happens every day but no one really cares unless it hurts them directly... ...huh, guess I did have something to say...
I'm on Charter and I've most definitely been randomly redirected to Charter's internal search page for no good reason. The last example of this I definitely remember is when I tried to visit www.gimp.org and instead I was sent to Charter's search page. Charter's search then displayed www.gimp.org as one of the search results. When I clicked on the search result I was sent to www.gimp.org without any further issues. This tells me there is no technical difficulty at all, it's just a corrupt tactic being used by Charter to try to milk their customers (as if they need even more profits, as being being a one of the companies in a duopoly is just not good enough for them).
Fuck everything about this practice.
Most markets in USA have either an effective monopoly or a duopoly when it comes to ISPs. Or otherwise we have options that cost 3-5 times over the fair market rates which do not even try to compete for the residential dollar.
You do realize the article is external and not "written by Slashdot", right?
You do understand the "evils" listed go beyond just "involving money" to serious issues concerning privacy, the integrity of web systems, etc., right?
You do realize you don't ever have to read Slashdot if it angers you so, right?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Thought thinks itself.
How about, instead of something nebulous like points, we describe an ISP's level of evil by the number of years in prison an individual hacker would get if they got caught doing the things these corporations do to traffic passing through systems they control.
If so, where do I sign on to the lawsuit for fraud?
Too late. The "Open Government" Obama administration has already granted them immunity, including retroactive immunity, for any illegal spying. The one big thing I was hoping for from Obama was to roll back some of the grosser programs put in place in violation of 1st and 4th amendments by the Bush administration. Instead his administration has taken them WAY farther. It's getting to the point of approaching gross violations of the Constitution by Lincoln during the American Civil War. But at least Lincoln had the excuse of a civil war to contend with. Obama and the morons in Congress are doing primarily to line there pockets with money from corporate interest.
Who is John Galt?
The motivation for all 5 is money. That's not what makes it evil. What makes them evil is that they are interfering with the way the internet works. If it were a phone call, they would have been jailed. But for some reason, traffic on the internet is not yet considered private use of a communications network the way the phone network is.
Verizon FIOS (residential, at least) redirects to Paxfire on mistyped domains.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
I would like to make it clear that NO ORGANIZATION need respond to a subpoena without a fight. There are a thousand ways that a public or private entity can get a subpoena issued for your private information. Basically, a party simply asks the court to issue one, and the court does. The receiver or other "affected parties" have every right to object to the subpoena and demand a hearing. For example, an ISP could insist on a suitable delay in order to inform the user of the subpoena and give the user the time and information necessary to fight the subpoena. If, after a hearing, the court finds the subpoena valid, it will issue a "court order," that had better be followed, or the recipient can be charged with contempt of court.
ISPs, banks, and other organization regularly roll over when issued subpoenas, coughing up all the customer's information without giving the customer the opportunity to respond and object. The underlying issue might be a nasty divorce, an evil contractor, a whiny neighbor, or a gov't employee fishing for glory. Most large organizations have some small print in their terms of use or account contract that says that the customer gives up the right to question subpoenas and that the organization will obey subpoenas no matter who they are from without first warning the customer.
I know personally of one organization that holds private customer data and simply ignores all subpoenas. They have received hundreds over the years, but not a single court order. So those lawyer types and account PR people who say they "have to" obey subpoenas are not telling the (whole) truth.
Note that attorneys and medical provides have "special rules" protecting client information. Funny how that works, huh?
For people who care about privacy, many of us would pay a bit extra for service from an organization that promises to put our interests first.
Disclaimers: (1) IANAL, so by definition, "this is not legal advice." Consult your attorney. (2) Some subpoenas require secrecy, and there are homeland defense subpoenas that are different, but these types are actually rare.
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
That's immunity from charges that they cooperated with government spying without a warrant.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with "redirecting end-user traffic in order to generate affiliate payments". The government is not involved in that, did not ask the ISPs to do that, and offers no immunity to prosecution from that.
It's not just that it shows ads, it breaks lots of internet services.
People seem to forget that the web isn't just HTTP, and there are quite a few other things that do DNS lookups. And weird stuff happens when a name that doesn't exist resolves, and the connection is directed to an ad server.
I remember when news broke of a user tracking software (Phorm) built right into the ISP's servers (BT). No BT broadband customers were informed of such online tracking and there was no opt out (later on, a cookie opt out and then trials ended). UK law officials/regulators did nothing to punish BT: CPS: We won't prosecute over BT/Phorm secret trials!
Cox has its own redirection.
Easily fixed by putting in 4.4.4.4 and 8.8.8.8 into your DNS servers.
However, this seems more invasive and abusive.
I'm curious what it would take to lead to another revolution. Are the same people who get pissed off about corporate control of government, the same people who would take up arms to stop it? And would a revolution even change anything, if most citizens' eyes just glaze over on any topic like this?
Count me out of an armed revolt. Too much bloodshed, and it creates more problems than it solves.
Count me out of an armed revolt. Too much bloodshed, and it creates more problems than it solves.
Only because you're still in the comfort zone created by the bread and circuses. But that's ok they are going to erode a little more of your rights every year, until finally you won't care about shedding blood anymore. Revolution happens when the people would rather be dead than live under such conditions. Today people are still willing to live under these conditions - indeed the US is still much better than "those other places". However there are those of us that still remember that it was much better than it is today. It's only a matter of time.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Armed revolt is messy, indiscriminate, and has a pitifully high probability of installing authoritarian regimes. I am under no illusion that it would lead to a "better" way of living if I manage to survive it. Contrary to what fearmongers would have you think, the United States still has a bit of democracy left, and it is easier to make the public politically active than it is to fight a civil war with no end in sight.
The problem with that approach is that the network (at least the "last mile" leading to customers' residences) is a natural monopoly. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly for a definition. For a competitor, it is usually not worthwhile to build a parallel network if he can reach only a few customers. Result: The incumbent ISP can like a fuckhead and get away with it.
A way to solve that would be a public network where the customer can choose his provider and the provider can then rent the wire from the customer's house to the next telephone exchange. Germany got that one halfway right:
When the telecommunications branch of the former Deutsche Post (public mail and telecom authority) was privatized, the new company "Deutsche Telekom" also got the network - under the condition that they rent out the "last mile" to competitors if the customer wants to go with one of those. A new regulation authority controls the price for that rent.
As a result, Germany actually has DSL competition in most places. Of course, there is still a lot of bickering between Deutsche Telekom and the competition about how much rent is fair, and the regulation authority is needed to keep the Deutsche Telekom from charging excessive rates. But by and large it works.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Looking at known history of mankind, I think it's pretty safe to bet at least 100:1 against you. Sadly.
Mediacom do *404 hijacking*. They redirect some 404s (aka page not found) to the same junk page they redirect NXDOMAINs. I thought several sites had dropped off the face of the earth (at least the DNS failed), when it turned out they had just reorgranized the sites and Mediacom had hijacked the 404 responses. As a bonus, the opt-out page (which is at least the kind that affects the whole connection and not the broken "oh we'll set a cookie" type) does not work for 404 hijacking. Within the last week, I did see 404 hijacks stop, so I don't know if the "opt out" started working or if the threats of lawsuits from site owners persuaded Mediacom they cannot pull people away from valid sites, or if the hijacks are simply intermittent.
They also generate the 404 errors themselves by having frequent DNS "problems". I've been logging DNS downtime on a half-hour basis since January, and it seems to be around 20-25%.
I am not a crackpot.
However there are those of us that still remember that it was much better than it is today. It's only a matter of time.
Oh I dunno. I'm no historian, but I see plenty of examples of domestic spying, nasty foreign politics, corporate greed, etc. from well before I was born that make today's US look like a hippie love-in. Not that I'm complaining.
I'd say we're getting better all the time, just like most every other place. We're just more likely to be pissed about current events... so we perceive things as worse, even when they're not.
Doesn't OpenDNS return bogus results for what should be NXDOMAIN responses? http://www.opendns.com/home/basic/ suggests so with "The customizable OpenDNS Guide page appears when you try to access a non-existent website and displays relevant search results to help you get where you want to go" and no hint that it can be turned off (at least on the basic account).
I've been using Google's DNS service (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) since a little problem with my last ISP's servers one day last year, and they honour NXDOMAIN correctly.
Open ANY history book that looks at more then a few years of history. Start reading. You'll find that regardless of the focus of said book, one thing will always be a constant: the never ending cycle of concentrating power in fewer and fewer hands, followed by bloody revolution that redistributes power into much larger amount of hands, following by once again concentrating the power in the hands of a few.
This is a constant for human society from tribal ages. We're talking tens of thousands years at LEAST. The form that power takes has been changing over time, but the way it works, the way it's used and the way it's distributed has not. To break this cycle, you'd need a completely new sociological approach - something humanity has not been able to develop throughout its history, and not for a lack of trying. I think 100:1 for status quo is a very safe bet here, and even something in realm of 10000:1 would still be pretty safe seeing just how little we have progressed in terms of actual sociological basis for our thinking from stone age. Bloodless wealth redistribution revolutions largely do not work simply because those in power will be willing to shed blood to keep the power.
Essentially your only real claim is that we're simply not at the point where it would benefit enough people to revolt, and here we will easily agree - the real argument here would be that we've passed the crossroads where we could try something new instead of the cycle as there is now enough power in few enough hands to render further concentration of power unstoppable in practice.
Your claim doesn't really address the cycle of concentration of power, nor the inevitable bloody redistribution once the critical point is passed. It only claims that we're not beyond the point where revolution becomes easily visible. In this regard, USA is no different then hundreds of other empires that existed throughout the history.
Count me out of an armed revolt. Too much bloodshed, and it creates more problems than it solves.
Only because you're still in the comfort zone created by the bread and circuses. But that's ok they are going to erode a little more of your rights every year, until finally you won't care about shedding blood anymore. Revolution happens when the people would rather be dead than live under such conditions. Today people are still willing to live under these conditions - indeed the US is still much better than "those other places". However there are those of us that still remember that it was much better than it is today. It's only a matter of time.
Comfort zone perhaps, I think the real step back from violence happens when you have children though. I remember entertaining fanciful ideas of saying eff it back in the day, but I have responsibilities now. Let them erode my rights untill the crazy buggers like you take up arms, I'll have my wife and child on the first boat out and hope y'all make something worth coming back to.
You forgot the extremely obvious #3: A realist with solid grasp on history and no illusions in line with "humanity is great force for good, and democracy is the best ruling system ever!".
Humans certainly have a great degree of control of how they live their own lives. By extension all but very few on top have any control over how world works, just like a grand machine doesn't really get a major impact if one of atoms that form it's structure suddenly dies to radioactive decay.
I'm not certain how you can "reject my understanding of subject matter" when your entire argument is essentially summed in these words: "I _believe_ it will be different this time".
You have NOTHING to base this belief on except belief itself. I have several thousands of years of DOCUMENTED history to back mine, and several tens of thousands of assumed history based on significant amount of evidence and not really countered by any decent historian.
Let me give you a great example, based on your claims of our "major achievements" on just how ridiculous your beliefs are in light of history: "women can vote. slavery is abolished. the middle class has risen to take power".
Yet we have:
1. Constant reports of legitimized slavery in Western countries by UN which has taken forms of everything from prostitution to working for essentially no wages (also look at 3.). Even more outside Western countries. Religious communities which have essentially slaves under different names. Etc.
2. Women voting rights (and rights in general) are still far below those of men in vast majority of the world (read: everywhere, but the gap differs based on location). In the west, any improvements of right of women are massively fleeting and directly linked to financial superiority over other regions. In has been systemically observed that when crises hit, women are the first to get laid off to stay home with children. In many countries, including but not limited to Germany, France and Japan women are culturally EXPECTED to leave work to have children and then stay home with them if their husband makes enough money. It is also observed that empowered women have significantly lower birth rate, essentially getting squeezed out over generations by those in more "traditional" circumstances who have much better birth rate. There is a very good example of this in modern Israel, high birth rate of orthodox jews in comparison to general populace has taken their marginal political power and turned them into a powerhouse - they now have a foreign minister who is a member of their party, and somewhere between 15 and 20% of soldiers drafted into army are now treating the Palestine conflict as a "holy war" rather then "war for survival".
As a result, any advanced made in this field can be maintained only as long as financial superiority holds. When reset happens (looking at many African countries with their constant revolutions is a great example) women are very quickly pushed back into traditional roles.
3. Middle class rise to power is absolutely nothing new. For example that's how Rome was built. In this regard, it also makes a great example on how Rome collapsed: middle class was slowly pushed out of power by slaves on working front from below, and squeezed dry by rich class from above. We have essentially the same socioeconomic situation brewing in the West as we speak, with cheap gastarbeiters working slave wages and hours destroying middle class from below, while rich class continues the financial squeeze from above shrinking the middle class. Just like it happened in Rome. And when middle class finally cannot take the strain and shrinks too far, modern West will likely join Rome in the history books as yet another empire that got killed not by outside forces, but simply rot from inside and collapsed on itself.
On the last note: our argument is likely pointless. You have very little facts available to support your hypothesis of "optimistic outcome" of modern Western empire(s) - the likelihood of me missing any historic evidence on th