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Comcast Wants To Charge Broadband Users More For Privacy (dslreports.com)
Comcast believes it should be able to charge its broadband users who want to protect their privacy. FCC, on other hand, has indicated that such practices should not be there. In a new filing with the FCC, Comcast says that charging consumers more money to opt out of "snoopvertising" should be considered a perfectly acceptable business model (PDF). DSLReports: "A bargained-for exchange of information for service is a perfectly acceptable and widely used model throughout the U.S. economy, including the Internet ecosystem, and is consistent with decades of legal precedent and policy goals related to consumer protection and privacy," Comcast said in the filing. The company proceeds to claim that banning such options "would harm consumers by, among other things, depriving them of lower-priced offerings." In short, Comcast is arguing that protecting your own privacy should be a paid luxury option, and stopping them from doing so would raise broadband rates. But as we've noted for years it's the lack of competition that keeps broadband prices high. It's also the lack of competition that prevents users upset with broadband privacy practices from switching to another ISP. That's why the FCC thinks some basic privacy rules of the road might be a good idea.
AT&T has being doing this since they announced GigaPower, their 1GB/1GB service.
$100 / month if you want your privacy, or $70 if you let them snoop
...just saying that I'm damned glad I'm no longer a Comcast user. Satellite Internet may cost a bit (and don't ask about bandwidth caps), but at least I get to keep my privacy.
I would say that flopping over to DSL or a different competitor (if possible) would be a possibility, but I doubt it would be too long before all the other massive telecoms decide that "...hey, let's monetize and intrude the crap out of our customers the same way!"
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Comcast complains that the FCC won't let them put remote controlled explosives into their modems in order to bring lower prices to customers.
"A bargained-for exchange of customer's safety and well-being for higher prices is a perfectly acceptable and widely used model throughout the U.S. economy, including the Internet ecosystem, and is consistent with decades of legal precedent and policy goals related to consumer protection and privacy. [Not letting us put explosives in modems] would harm consumers by, among other things, depriving them of lower-priced offerings," Comcast's representative writes.
The last couple of weeks have seen a massive influx of Putin trolls, Hillbots, North Koreans declaring war, all sorts of conservatrolls and libtards, and an intense round of baiting by the communist Chinese, and yet...
Comcast manages to make me twice as pissed off as all the rest of them combined.
I have at least 3 ways to get broadband where I live. Building out infrastructure to deliver broadband is exceptionally expensive and as such is a limiting endeavor since such expenses need to be recouped. A world where there are dozens of companies scrambling to run wires to your doorstep might sound wonderful to the naive among us, but those of us more experienced in the realities of the business world realize that all those companies would quickly go bankrupt because none would acquire enough customers to pay off the immense expense of building out. A small number of providers is simply the nature of this beast. The correct way to do it would be for government to build and maintain the public infrastructure, and allow competing ISPs to share it for a fee.
JFC, how low can they go? They really need some competition. 15 years ago when I had DSL the phone company had to allow third party ISPs to offer service on their infrastructure. Time to apply this to cable (and back on the phone company as well) and regulate the infrastructure as a utility.
I'll pay a VPN if I have too. Comcrap can stuff it where the sun doesn't shine.......sideways.
mod parent up! lol
If they're legally allowed to do this, then I AM DONE with Comcast once and for all. I already dumped cable TV years ago, and only use Comcast still for internet because I'm too lazy to change it -- but if they're legally allowed to hold my privacy for ransom like this, then they'll get kicked to the curb so fast it'll make their heads spin. I don't even care if I have NO internet at home, I won't put up with protection-racket bullshit like that, no fucking way.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Really, moving the world to encrypted-by-default is the only solution for this sort of silliness. Then, they can do deep packet inspection all they want to, and all they'll get is a hostname, at best.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Comcast argues that a service costing $10 can be sold for >=$10, or sold for >=($10 - market_price_of_information). By extension, they claim a user has access to that service for a lower price through this exchange, and propose offering a decision: (pay <$10 AND have the service AND leak personal information) OR (pay $10 AND have the service AND NOT leak personal information) OR (pay $0 AND NOT have the service AND NOT leak personal information).
Summary makes a luxury option claim, arguing for the decision: (pay $10 AND have the service) OR (pay $0 AND NOT have the service).
The lack of competition argument is also tired and old. It's stated again and again, without data; meanwhile Comcast's actual, pre-tax profit margin (net profits after all costs and before taxes) is averaging roughly 10%, so that $80/month Blast! 150Mbit/s service could be a whole $7 cheaper if all of Comcast's services were given a proportionally-similar price reduction to cut their profit to $0.
You could argue that their internet service is particularly overpriced; that conflicts with the common notion that Comcast gives discounts on its package service (TV/Internet) because their Cable TV service is overpriced to subsidize their Internet service.
Interestingly enough, $30/mo in France will get you 10Mo down/1.5Mo up, about 0.33/0.05 Mo per dollar; $80/mo in America will get you 150Mo down/15Mo up, about 1.875/0.1875 Mo per dollar. For a given amount of throughput, Internet service is pretty fucking expensive in France; meanwhile Comcast is talking about bringing 2Gb service to the home here as the next evolution of their Blast 150Mb service.
Still a shit company with shitty service, but let's not go full-potato on economics and finances and just declare that competition magically drives prices down below costs, somehow, and that prices are way higher than costs simply because we don't know wtf the cost might actually be.
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frankly I don't care. There is nothing I put on the internet that is not completely retarded nonsense. They can snoop all they want.
Blackarch LIVE. Do it.
Set clock to inaccurate too.
for the check from comcast that pays me my share of the revenue they earned using my data. after all, its an acceptable business model.
If they were calling this a discount for accepting advertising instead of a premium for lack of it, nobody would have an issue with this. The only difference between the two is that this is a stealth price increase that they hope will bypass regulators' notice (it might).
Mainly, this means that Comcast's PR people are idiots, but that's hardly news.
two reasons:
1. they've been doing scummy things for some time, surely somebody would have stopped them by now if it was bad
2. other people do scummy things, surely somebody would have stopped them by now if it was bad
thats scum for you.
"A bargained-for exchange of information for service is a perfectly acceptable and widely used model throughout the U.S. economy, including the Internet ecosystem, and is consistent with decades of legal precedent and policy goals related to consumer protection and privacy," Comcast said in the filing.
I'm already paying you ~$70 a month for internet service. There already exists "bargained-for exchange of information for service." It's called me paying my fucking extortionate bill every month.
you'll miss the lulz!
It should more correctly read "Comcast Wants To Charge Broadband Users More"
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Oh wait... NBC... So yeah they basically do.
Is extortion or shakedown a better word to describe the practice?
Using Unlock, Ghostery, Disconnect.me, and the like, are forbidden under our new Terms of Service. If you want these features, you must buy them from us in the new Privacy Plus package, only $40 (for six months).
Comcast is so full of shit.
More reason for the government to take over internet access, run the fiber, and hook every house up, no caps or snooping. Provide the pipe and get out of the way.
You type like a dead man.
Except that price of "with privacy" option would be set based on what marked would bear and not of market price of information.
It wouldn't be $10 and $10 - price_of_information, it would be $10 + privacy premium and $10.
Comcast is shitty as fuck and no amount of paid shills would change it.
"That's a nice reputation you've got there. . ."
They're Cunts!
Firefox on it is awesome, pipe it through vidalia. Everything you need for encrypt anything is there.
Install the noscript addon, and the adblock plus addon
In NoScript uncheck all under ABE, and remove all default accept permissions under XSS
In adblock plus import these custom filters for starters, add more as they try to fuck you. (just save as .txt and import custom filters)
http://pasted.co/6aeed3e0
Follow this guide.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-connections
Fuck any new version unless people with knowledge such as myself endorse it. Everything internet related is being commando'd by the US government for their vast surveillance fantasy.
In your torrc add these two lines and bypass USA totally on TOR (.onion)
StrictNodes 1
ExcludeNodes {us}
Full country list is here.
http://www.b3rn3d.com/blog/2014/03/05/tor-country-codes/
If you can use other than Comcast, do it. They are the worst rated company on Earth since ever for very good reasons.
Cut your cable, use Kodi.
See a Comcast van? ice pick.
Somebody comes to your door offering new Comcast services, tell them you fucked their mom. Then actually go fuck their mom.
From what we've seen, companies have a massive incentive to violate consumer privacy in the form of free-market competition for advertising. The better the ad-platform, the higher the market value, etc. With this model, businesses who fail to deliver on explicitly purchased privacy are immediately guilty of false advertising. More than that, Comcast may have a vested interest in keeping -others- from snooping, too. It's good advertising to say your broadband connection actively combats to prevent unauthorized cross-site scripting. It creates a lucrative consumer market -for- privacy protection. Like it or not, money usually gets more done than government mandates.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
+1 Insightful
%%%%%%%% This IS WHATS Up 000000000000000
Where are you getting your France numbers from? According to my wife who lived in France for 2 years (albeit around 5 years ago), she got faster internet, home phone, TV, and wireless service for about what we pay today in the US for just internet.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
You assume that 10% margin isn't subject to all kinds of legal tax voodoo first...which I highly suspect is the case. Considering other providers in countries can provide the same (well, better anyhow) service for significantly LESS I really doubt comcast is really operating on that margin.
See 'hollywood accounting' for examples of those who have made an art of it.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
So what corporate America is saying is that privacy is only for the wealthy now? They have the right to data mine the personal info of the poor for profit and force them to be bombarded by advertisements designed to fool the viewer into thinking they need whatever it is they're being told they need ( pretty much brain wash them into buying more and more Chinese made crap)?
--- Keep the choice with the user..
So, the money from selling your data, both today and in the future, has already been booked and spent. So, from Comcast's point of view, they're losing money. From our point of view, Comcast can fuck right off with their selling us bullshit, but since they've already spent the money, they think of it as a loss. Assholes.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
This is an old guide but you can use it for starters if you are typical Joe Sixpack and want that Xfinity sharing shit gone from your life.
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/45598-wireless-networks-allow-block-filter-windows.html
Comcast need their asses beat.
It would be interesting to know if Comcast makes any attempt to differentiate VoIP calls from other IP traffic and avoid snooping on it.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Some French guy on Slashdot was talking about how he gets free mobile phone with 2 hours of talk and spends ~30 euros ($32) on 10Mbit DSL yesterday, and couldn't believe American internet was so expensive ($80).
Quantify "faster" and "about what we pay today" with numbers.
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Perhaps, yet that's still an unsubstantiated "I think they're lyin' and I think they're rich" argument, instead of a rational argument.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Not only should it not be legal, they should be obligated to give 100% of the ill-gotten gains they've received from doing so in the past to the customers whose privacy they violated.
Who did what now?
Comcast is more than likely engaging in "Hollywood" accounting so I would take anything they say publicly with pillar of salt.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
We know whose payroll you're on...
comcast: "Pay us or we will spill your beans to the highest bidders" me: "no!!! and I just cancelled your service"
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
That's where Comcast gets its good ideas. It should be well populated by lawyers and MBAs by now.
Subject says it all.
Buy your way through the criminal system after murdering your Comcast representative who you caught fucking your significant other. Murder, now only $499. Torture now $50 off. Want to steal the property of the representative? Now only $249!! Conditions* may apply.
*No refunds, no annulment of purchase, stocks may depend of the number of Comcast representatives.
how much you want to bet that even if you pay to opt out, Comcast will still be collecting personal data about you and selling it.
and stopping them from doing so would raise broadband rates.
It doesn't matter what they claim, being a customer of Comcast will cause them to raise rates. I've lived in the same area for well over a decade. Originally I had Adelphia until they fell apart and were absorbed by Comcast. I paid $35/ month for my internet. It has been creeping up over the years since Comcast took over and my last couple of bills have been $95/ month. Up from $85/ month until recently.
Except it can't, because the latter option is unethical and should be criminal!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Hey Didnt NetZeo do this same thing with dialup but FOR FREE???
its my understanding that people produce ads for Comcast for a fee.. that fee also covers the distribution of said ad..
So now, Comcast wants you to pay them extra for a service you had 2 or 3 years ago with out all the clutter?
double dipping?
so does that mean that if I pay for a 50m connection I may get 45 due to ad delivery?? Doesn't that breach terms of contract?
...that I won't buy a house in their service area. Twice now I've limited my house purchases to areas outside their geography. Thankfully there is a good local provider (Wave Broadband) in a nearby city which has excellent service and decent prices. Friends who live elsewhere are not so lucky, and are always fighting to get what they paid for.
God, Comcast is the friggin' worst. I escalated a security risk to Comcast a few months back. Exposed passwords, ssh keys, infrastructure scripts (.exp, .sh, .awk), logs, etc. Pretty deep shit. It took a few hours to get ahold of someone to fix it, but they actually fixed it really surprisingly quickly afterwards and held a meeting later in the day. They brought up potentially starting up a bug bounty and starting me as a pilot of it, kind of.
Welp, I eventually got in contact with their CISO and asked her about it. "It's not a bug bounty program, so we're not going to pay you."
Very clear what their intentions are with privacy, security, etc.
... go fuck themselves, when they can fuck you and millions other over, especially when they have you exactly where they want you? you'll have to pay them to fuck you over and thank them for fucking you over. things don't get much better for them than that.
As part of common carrier, Comcast must want the FCC to have to define what Internet service it.
1) You get a routable Internet IP address
2) You get a connection with some stated bandwidth
3) You can send packets to anybody else on the Internet with a reasonable expectation that they will get there in a reasonable time unaltered.
4) Anybody else can likewise send to you.
5) I guess we need to add that your packets are not copied and information sold or otherwise used for other's purposes.
Will using TOR defeat their snooping? I'd think it would. Also I routinely use HTTPS Everywhere and Redirect Cleaner; or do they do man-in-the-middle attacks on my encrypted traffic so they can snoop on that, too?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I support Comcast on this one:
LEGAL BASIS
This does not violate network neutrality. Data sent over ISP is not protected by any other laws I know. It's legal.
FINANCIAL BASIS
My internet is cheaper, and no less secure.
TECHNICAL BASIS
The explicit spying incentivizes HTTPS adoption.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Yes, when both parties have a choice whether or not to enter into that agreement. I don't trust Microsoft, so I don't use their free services. Google so far hasn't abused my info, so I use their free services. (I set up a different email for each company, and google@myname.com hasn't gotten spam. microsoft@myname.com regularly gets spam. Indicating Google has kept my email address with them secret, while Microsoft has sold it for profit.)
All this goes out the window when the ISP is a government-granted monopoly. Monopoly = I don't have a choice. So hell no. A government-granted monopoly should not be able to obtain anything from its customers except a government-approved amount of cash.
Otherwise, it's a ripoff. And that's WITH privacy.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If they inject adds, they aren't just a carrier any more.
But take away their carrier privileges.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I promise not to snoop on your traffic if you pay me (more).
Anyone ever hear of a piece of software that will generate random HTTP requests to random websites? I want to generate huge amount of 'random noise' so Comcast loses any 'signal' they could get out of me. Doesn't need to load whole pages, just needs to do something like a basic GET of a page, throw the data away, then another, and so on, until you shut it down. I think hundreds of thousands or millions of random page requests per month will more or less screw any of their 'snooping'.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
In your torrc add these two lines and bypass USA totally on TOR (.onion)
StrictNodes 1
ExcludeNodes {us}
If you're in the US, congratulations. You've just routed your traffic over an international border at least twice, giving the government all the jurisdiction they need to intercept it legally.
Fuck Comcast.
It's comcastic!
Should I jump from the side of the building, or from the front?
Vinny believes he should be able to charge local businesses who want to protect their shops...Vinny says that charging local businesses more money for to opt out of "random security checks" should be considered a perfectly acceptable business model....
"... stopping them from doing so would raise broadband rates ..."
I don't believe there is anything here on this Earth or anywhere in the freakin' Universe that could ever stop US broadband providers from continuously rising their incredibly high prices. About privacy, you should've already gotten used to loosing all versions of it - both in the US and elsewhere -, and don't expect to actually have better privacy even if you end up paying for it. They'll still give every information to everyone asking for it, plus, do you really think they'd get your money and invest in actually protecting your privacy? Right.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
The reason this is BS (and totally unreasonable) is that turning a customer's privacy into a commodity is wrong. Like the anti-Net Neutrality argument, you can't make a case for this using blinkered economics that avoid the ethical/moral issues.
Here in Chicago they are now charging $10/month rental fee for their modems. But if you buy your modem, and they have to send a tech out to you, they charge $50 per visit even if the problem has nothing to do with the modem. Insane price hikes all over the place with these crooks and the service isn't very good to begin with. But because I live in an apartment building, I don't have a choice of providers.
They're already harming consumers. They should be forced to sit down, STFU, and be given a government regulation colonic that purges the excrement from their consumer policies.
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
Your argument is that it's unethical to enable people to access things they couldn't otherwise access. Ethics are bullshit, man. Ethics are what you use to excuse "X is wrong, but my ethical guidelines say I must X, so I will X." Ethics are why you withhold life-saving medication and watch people die, slowly and painfully. After WW2, when the Nazis were put out of power, people came across all this documented medical research; they debated *not* using it because it would be *unethical*, because it was the result of human experimentation--they would rather commit the atrocity of letting people suffer and die than commit no atrocity while handling information derived from atrocities already committed.
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Of course I can. The strongest case I can make is nobody is selling my private identifying information--bank accounts, social security numbers, credit cards--or my personal life. They're selling records of my public interaction, or aggregate statistics.
People get all up-in-arms about something like Facebook selling statistics that they have some number of users who, between certain hours, have interest in My Little Ponies *and* are 28-35. They sell advertising in blocks like that, and someone buys an ad, and you get shown an ad targeting you based on your behavior. Folks go, "OH MY GOD THEY'RE SELLING MY PERSONAL INFORMATION!" ... well, yes. This matters how?
The answer is it only matters because it personally offends someone in some nebulous way. The practical impact on anyone's and everyone's privacy is NOTHING.
It's a bunch of noise from a bunch of idiots who have no idea what the fuck is going on, but want to brandish their nerd-cred by crying privacy for every fucking thing while they run personal web servers that log IP addresses.
If you were so concerned about privacy, maybe you'd lobby to make police body cameras illegal to protect the privacy of the officers, too; for that matter, people shouldn't be able to look at you when you're outside, and cars should be largely invisible and not have license plates because that's waving your privacy all over the place. Of course all of those things have concrete, identifiable leads back to someone's personal, individual activity; and they all occur in public, where the information is visible by many third-parties; and nobody actually cares, and will argue (finally with some sanity) that things like recording the police should be legal if for no other reason than because they're IN A PUBLIC PLACE AND CAN'T EXPECT PRIVACY--but HEAVEN HELP THEM if they have a PHOTOGRAPH of YOUR CAR driving down a PUBLIC ROAD, because that's INVADING YOUR PRIVACY!
You can't even identify most of the private information they must be selling; and the information you can identify, you can't figure out why it might impinge on your privacy. Like an asinine patent troll, all you can do is assert that metrics and numbers and ideals describing groups of people built up from individual sampling are magically dangerous to you now, somehow, because, although this has been done for literally hundreds of years, it's now being done "ON A COMPUTER".
Mass hysteria, because the masses are idiots.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Avidly fuck their shit up. Their VANS, their KIDNEYS, if you see them walking a dog, BURN IT at their HOUSE.
No freaking way! Here in the USA, we have a Constitutional right to privacy - as a FUNDAMENTAL right, thus a GIVEN. ANY party, whether another citizen, or a corporate entity, is OBLIGATED to honor that privacy as a FREE and UNALIENABLE right.
Thus, if you want to know something about my private life, YOU need to pay ME - IF, and only IF, I decide to sell you my privacy.
Corporate biz models have gotten severely twisted; such that these entities seem to think that they have rights beyond a HUMAN citizen. They have taken capitalism beyond where it serves ALL people. Capitalism needs to be severely regulated so as NOT to allow any infringement on PEOPLES' rights. It is NOT in the best interest for any entity to have the unregulated right to decide what is in MY best interest. Knowing my 'private' stuff does NOT necessarily paint an accurate picture of me. It only gives you a tool (i.e. weapon) to subvert things (i.e.money) from me.
If you want to know what products I might be interested in, then ASK me!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
There, we are at last discussing why it sucks to have any digital information on the clouds.
The Big Flaw in Comcast's argument is found in the following: "A bargained-for exchange of information for service is a perfectly acceptable and widely used model throughout the U.S. economy, including the Internet ecosystem, and is consistent with decades of legal precedent and policy goals related to consumer protection and privacy".
The US legal system is riddled with ethical conflict of interest, so something being consistent with "decades of legal precedent" is frequently just another way of saying "consistent with unethical legal practice".
The right to ethical practice of law being a fundamental right, retained by the people under the 9th Amendment, when we say something is unethical practice of law, it's also illegal.
For example, one big legal ethics issue involve the conflict of interest between contract law, and the Bill of Rights. Perusal of any contract law textbook will show that there is a long history of lawyers deciding what can and can not go into a contract. However, what NO contract law textbook points out is that legal professionals are in a position of massive ethical conflict of interest with respect to what can legitimately go into a contract. Contracts are the bread-and-butter of the profession: contact related matters are the primary source of income for most lawyers. This makes the views of legal professionals regarding contracts and the legitimate scope of contract law highly suspect.
History shows that legal professionals are not to be trusted with ethics issues involving the legal system: we simply have too many examples of cases where the profession has failed miserably, such as slavery, and the Jim Crow "laws".
A classic modern example of this problem is the presence - in almost all software contracts - of a clause against reverse engineering. This is simply an exercise of human curiosity, and hence freedom of thought (which has considerably more than mere decades of protection). It's unethical practice of law to put these clauses into contracts, and hence illegal, and yet most lawyers do it routinely.
Further, contract law is not the highest law in the land, the Bill of Rights is the highest law in the land, and as a matter of ethical practice of law, reasonable expectations regarding the legal system govern in matters involving ordinary people. There are a couple of reasonable expectations here: 1. the legal system will be ethical (with even the appearance of conflict of interest being avoided), and 2. higher law will supersede lessor law when they come into conflict.
There is no doubt whatsoever that ordinary people believe they have a strong right to privacy (even public figures still have some right to privacy).
It follows that it is unethical practice of law for Comcast's lawyers to claim that they should be able to violate the privacy rights of their customers.
It's not just lawyers that are out of line here, since the right to ethics in business arises under the 9th Amendment as well, and naturally that right is also being violated when business sell information about their customers. Hence the Comcast executives attempting to implement this policy are also breaking the law.
The issue of limited competition simply makes the argument made by Comcast even more unethical. Another problem is that any infrastructure created to spy on customers will certainly be abused by criminal elements, both in and out of government and likely including Comcast employees and executives.
"Say, that's pretty nice personal information you got there.
Be a shame if anyone got their hands on it...."
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.