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Comcast 'Blocks' an Encrypted Email Service: Yet Another Reminder Why Net Neutrality Matters (zdnet.com)
Zack Whittaker, writing for ZDNet: For about twelve hours earlier this month, encrypted email service Tutanota seemed to fall off the face of the internet for Comcast customers. Starting in the afternoon on March 1, people weren't sure if the site was offline or if it had been attacked. Reddit threads speculated about the outage. Some said that Comcast was actively blocking the site, while others dismissed the claims altogether. Several tweets alerted the Hanover, Germany-based encrypted messaging provider to the alleged blockade, which showed a "connection timed out" message to Comcast users. It was as if to hundreds of Comcast customers, Tutanota didn't exist. But as soon as users switched to another non-Comcast internet connection, the site appeared as normal. "To us, this came as a total surprise," said Matthias Pfau, co-founder of Tutanota, in an email. "It was quite a shock as such an outage shows the immense power [internet providers] are having over our Internet when they can block sites...without having to justify their action in any way," he said.
By March 2, the site was back, but the encrypted email provider was none the wiser to the apparent blockade. The company contacted Comcast for answers, but did not receive a reply. When contacted, a Comcast spokesperson couldn't say why the site was blocked -- or even if the internet and cable giant was behind it. According to a spokesperson, engineers investigated the apparent outage but found there was no evidence of a connection breakage between Comcast and Tutanota. The company keeps records of issues that trigger incidents -- but found nothing to suggest an issue. It's not the first time Comcast customers have been blocked from accessing popular sites. Last year, the company purposefully blocked access to internet behemoth Archive.org for more than 13 hours.
By March 2, the site was back, but the encrypted email provider was none the wiser to the apparent blockade. The company contacted Comcast for answers, but did not receive a reply. When contacted, a Comcast spokesperson couldn't say why the site was blocked -- or even if the internet and cable giant was behind it. According to a spokesperson, engineers investigated the apparent outage but found there was no evidence of a connection breakage between Comcast and Tutanota. The company keeps records of issues that trigger incidents -- but found nothing to suggest an issue. It's not the first time Comcast customers have been blocked from accessing popular sites. Last year, the company purposefully blocked access to internet behemoth Archive.org for more than 13 hours.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Except that when they happen, rather than working hard to fix the issue, they can just say "We don't care. We don't have to".
Who better to block than small, niche sites that have no power? Blocking a Google would cause a huge shit storm.
That's one reason Net Neutrality matters so much. It's hard enough to offer competition against the behemoths. Once Google or any huge service provider can pay their way out of the slow lane, small businesses looking to compete might as well give up.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
An ISP has to disclose any traffic shaping. The fact that Comcast would not comment shows to me that it was a mistake. Net neutrality hasn't even expired yet but even if it did, this still would be illegal without disclosure if done intentionally.
I'm not an apologist for Comcast, at all.
However, remember they run their own DNS so they can mine where you're going with that so-called stealth browser of yours. When it does a DNS lookup, you get the correct IP address to do the https page pull.
If a DNS address becomes black-holed (there are a number of ways to accidentally do this, including being stupid), then you loose a site.
I'm guessing it got screwed up in cache, and when the cache flushed, it came back again. No huge subterfuge, no DDoS attack, just normal screw up. Even Slashdot was pretty stupid about how they did their infrastructure change-over. Happens all too frequently, but it happens. An alarmist charge towards the fate of net neutrality violations is a bit hyperbolic to me.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
First of all, ISPs already consolidate users to a few predetermined exit points, with the widespread use of carrier grade NAT.
Secondly, users gleefully consolidate themselves to a few predetermined exit nodes when they use Tor, and you trendy lemmings have such a fucking hardon for Tor.
Third and finally, nothing stops users from running OpenVPN or a similar free VPN server in the cloud or on a VPS host, which greatly increases the number of VPN exit points from a few to very many.
...what can be explained by incompetence.
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
Jut ran into an issue today with accessing state.gov web sites. Determined it was a DNS issue. When I switched my DNS server to 8.8.8.8 (google), the site was available from my browser.
Ended up on the phone with support for two hours trying to convince them it was their DNS server issue, and not my browser, router or modem issue.
This theory could have been easily tested by switching DNS to 8.8.8.8.
The result would be different. A missing DNS entry does not result in a timeout, you get a site not found.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
to point out the obvious. Whatever the problem was, it wasn't because of "Net Neutrality" legislation. Or if Comcast weighs more than a duck - then Net Neutrality matters!
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/