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Chinese ISPs Caught Injecting Ads And Malware In Their Network Traffic (thehackernews.com)
Chinese Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have been caught red-handed for injecting advertisements as well as malware through their network traffic. Three Israeli researchers uncovered that the major Chinese-based ISPs named China Telecom and China Unicom, two of Asia's largest network operators, have been engaged in an illegal practice of content injection in network traffic. Chinese ISPs had set up many proxy servers to pollute the client's network traffic not only with insignificant advertisements but also malware links, in some cases, inside the websites they visit. If an Internet user tries to access a domain that resides under these Chinese ISPs, the forged packet redirects the user's browser to parse the rogue network routes. As a result, the client's legitimate traffic will be redirected to malicious sites/ads, benefiting the ISPs.
"Three Israeli researchers uncovered that the major Chinese-based ISPs named China Telecom and China Unicom, two of Asia's largest network operators, have been engaged in an illegal practice of content injection in network traffic".
As a matter of interest, what laws does this contravene? If it happens in China, isn't it a matter for Chinese law? And is it likely that the Chinese government, which is often said to monitor all network traffic assiduously, would fail to notice such practices?
Also, I am doubtful about taking the word of Israeli researchers on such a matter. Israel, like the USA, has been deeply involved in hacking, spying, mass surveillance and even the insertion of (no doubt "illegal" an certainly extremely damaging) viruses such as Stuxnet. Presumably people who would engage systematically in such activities would not be beyond falsifying research findings.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
1- High price for ads is a good thing.
2- The "Almighty GOOG" does not "inject" ads. It puts them where the original site owner tell they should be placed, in exchange for money.
3- Ad injection/replacement by ISPs is the worst. The ad provider and most importantly the content owner lose money and you still see ads. And unlike with ad-blockers you can't turn it off if you want to support the site you are visiting. The ISP shouldn't serve you ads, you already pay it with money.
China Unicom on my phone is pretty good at not making it obvious that they're tampering with my traffic. They're also pretty friendly to VPNs running on my phone.
China Telecom, though, provides my home fiber service, and I've been getting their ads for years and years, including on my own sites! Calling and complaining about it has never had any effect. Unfortunately China Telecom is getting better and better at detecting and taking down VPNs, meaning that I can't leave my router-based VPN running all the time.
The fact that these ads are served over Bing makes me wonder why Microsoft doesn't get involved...
And, yeah, Bing is crap (for what I search for), but at least it works when the VPN isn't connecting.
--Jim (me)
yes, they are even set up in some pseudo rivalry. I assume it was intended, originally, to create some sort of competition. Except it created a duopoly where they both carved up the market between them. i.e. in some parts of town you can only get China Telecom and Unicom will simply tell you they don't serve that area, and the other way round.
However, they also make life difficult. Competition, in Chinese terms, is not making life for the other corporation difficult, but for its customers. They too are the enemy. So if you happen to have multiple corporate sites, some on Unicom, some on Telecom, you can expect that connectivity between them will be quite bad, because the Telcos are punishing you for signing up with the competition - as if you had a choice...
And even though China Telecom's motto is "Service, First and Foremost" it's just as much an empty slogan as Kim Jong-Un's propaganda is. Actually, I'm pretty sure the China Telecom "service halls" have been modeled on some hell from Dante's Inferno. Waiting in queue to speak to a human to get anything done there will waste precious hours of your life.