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AT&T Hotspots Now Injecting Ads
An anonymous reader writes: Computer scientist Jonathan Mayer did some investigating after seeing some unexpected ads while he browsed the web at an airport (Stanford hawking jewelry? The FCC selling shoes?). He found that AT&T's public Wi-Fi hotspot was messing with HTTP traffic, injecting advertisements using a service called RaGaPa. As an HTML pages loads over HTTP, the hotspot adds an advertising stylesheet, injects a simple advertisement image (as a backup), and then injects two scripts that control the loading and display of advertising content. Mayer writes, "AT&T has an (understandable) incentive to seek consumer-side income from its free Wi-Fi service, but this model of advertising injection is particularly unsavory. Among other drawbacks: It exposes much of the user's browsing activity to an undisclosed and untrusted business. It clutters the user's web browsing experience. It tarnishes carefully crafted online brands and content, especially because the ads are not clearly marked as part of the hotspot service.3 And it introduces security and breakage risks, since website developers generally don't plan for extra scripts and layout elements."
Why is modifying a web site in this way not copyright infringement? Is not AT&T creating an unauthorized derivative work?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
AT&T is initiating a man-in-the-middle attack. Can you really trust those ads? I mean they're injecting scripts. Who knows what those do, right?
Time for https on all websites.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lawsuit occurs the first time malware is injected onto a user's machine though one of these advertisements. If this keeps happening, it's really only a matter of time.
I think Comcast tried this same thing earlier, and temporarily backed off when people noticed them doing this and complained about it. Advertisements are bad enough, but you can sort of understand the desire of a website operator to want to pay for bandwidth. It's downright slimy when ads are simply injected in content someone doesn't own at all.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Didn't they claim to just be a carrier in order to not being held liable for what the users do with that connection? By delivering content they've created aren't they having their cake and eating it, too?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Anybody who is surprised by shit like this is an idiot.
Everybody setting up "free" hotspots wants to monetize with anayltics and ads.
Google wanting to sell you a router they can control is also going to lead to monetizing and ads.
The problem is unless we have really good quality tools to block this shit, we're never going to stop it. And this is why we can't trust ad infrastructure at all and need to block it .. because it's being done by people who want money, and don't give a crap about your security of your privacy.
Until this shit is deemed illegal (ie the computer fraud and abuse act), it will continue. Because the assholes at AT&T feel it is their right to do anything they want with your internet traffic.
Never trust that "free" doesn't come with strings like this. And never trust than any corporation won't revert to being sociopaths and decide they can do anything they want to.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Adherence to the law.
Even for free products.
But they could inject local CSS and local scripts into the page, so if you trust the current hostname by default (which many do for basic functionality) then NoScript won't help you here.
The ONLY thing unsavory advertising, in any form, does is the exact opposite of the initial intent; i.e., "never buying that". Advertisers, regardless of the delivery, apparently are not smart enough to realize if you annoy people, you have LOST the sale.
Plus, the whores are then really easy to spot. No resposible consumer likes a whore.
The ONLY thing unsavory advertising, in any form, does is the exact opposite of the initial intent; i.e., "never buying that". Advertisers, regardless of the delivery, apparently are not smart enough to realize if you annoy people, you have LOST the sale. Plus, the whores are then really easy to spot. No resposible consumer likes a whore.
Mod this guy up! Anything that manages to get through my defenses is put on the "Never ever" list.
The sooner advertisers understand that, and the sooner they understand that if they put simple unobtrusive ads on web pages, the sooner we'll stop this war on web users.
When your ads are having the opposite effect than you intended, maybe its time to change.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Have you tested this conclusion?
If it turns out that advertisers can test this—for instance, on Facebook, let's say—and discovered that it's not true: that there's a measurable advantage to obnoxiousness in that you're outnumbered by the people who shrug off the obnoxiousness yet retain the payload then you're mistaken.
I think they've already tested this, and we're seeing the outcome. Results are in: short of legislating better behavior, being abusive gets you enough local gains that it becomes a required strategy, impossible to compete against without adopting the same strategy.
It would be nice if the 'I boycott youuuu!' reaction made any sort of difference, but clearly it does not.