Charter Is Latest ISP To Plan Wiretapping Via DPI 309
Charter Communications has begun sending letters to its customers informing them that, in the name of an "enhanced user experience," it will begin spying on their traffic and inserting targeted ads. This sounds almost indistinguishable from what Phorm proposed doing in the UK. Lauren Weinstein issues a call to arms.
COX dns poisoning.. (Score:5, Informative)
http://support.cox.com/sdccommon/asp/contentredirect.asp?sprt_cid=e047dc81-18c4-485f-bcf3-1263d0b7b904 [cox.com]
How to opt out of the "enhanced user experience"
How does injecting ad's into my browser "enhance" my experience? Give me more fucking bandwith you money grubbing cheap fucks, and that MIGHT enhance my experience.. I hate them.
Details of Phorm (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone on charter, please visit our tripwire... (Score:5, Informative)
http://vancouver.cs.washington.edu/ [washington.edu], to (hopefully) detect in-flight page changes.
Re:Sounds Like... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Enhanced user experience (Score:5, Informative)
If you live in the Madison, WI area, attend the Madison Broadband Telecommunications Regulatory Board Meeting this Thursday (May 15, 2008) at 5:30pm in Room 103A of the City-County building (210 MLK Blvd). Complain during the Public Comment part of the meeting, which is immediately after Call to Order and Roll Call. I plan to be there.
If you don't live in the Madison, WI area and have Charter as the local franchise, find out when your municipality holds its regulatory meetings. They tend to be monthly or bimonthly and should be open to the public.
[To no one in particular:] Get out from behind your computer desk and get in someone's face! Tell your government that maintaining a laissez-faire attitude towards Charter is not working.
Re:Scummy ISPs (Score:5, Informative)
http://vancouver.cs.washington.edu/ [washington.edu]
"Customer Care" Response (Score:5, Informative)
I went to Charter's contact page [charter.com] and selected the option to chat live with a Customer Care Representative:
Me: I just read an article stating that Charter has begun sending letters to its customers informing them that, in the name of an "enhanced user experience," it will begin spying on their traffic and inserting targeted ads. Is there any truth to this?
TTD Jomar : Thank you for contacting Charter High Speed Internet Technical Support. My name is Jomar. How may I assist you today?
TTD Jomar : I'm so sorry, but this is already beyond our scope of support. Please call 1-888-438-2427 for further assistance.
Me: Thank you.
TTD Jomar : Again I apologize for the inconvenience you've experienced, but if there is anything further I can help you with please, let me know.
That kind of response doesn't sound like "Customer Care" to me.
Anyway, I called the number and spoke to someone who didn't have a clue what I was talking about. He transferred me to someone else.
The second phone rep said she hadn't heard about the new "enhanced user experience" feature, so she put me on hold to ask someone else. After she came back on the line, she said that she wasn't able to find out anything about it, so said to go to charter.net [charter.net] to stay informed about new features and services.
Naturally, there doesn't appear to be anything on Charter's site about the new "enhanced user experience."
My Conversation with Charter (Score:5, Informative)
TTM Mike : Hi this is Mike from Charter. How may I help you today?
Robert Hafner: I read an article online, and the followed it to the Charter webpage, which states that Charter is going to be monitoring my surfing habits and placing ads into pages I'm viewing. I am wondering how soon this will happen to me personally.
Robert Hafner: http://connect.charter.com/landing/op1.html [charter.com]
TTM Mike : I do apologize but let me transfer you over toour internet support line.
TTM Mike has left the session.
Please wait while we find an agent from the CHAT - DUMA - HSD Support department to assist you.
You have been connected to TTD Grah .
TTD Grah : Hi, this is Grah. Thank you for contacting Charter's High Speed Internet support. How may I be of assistance to you today?
Robert Hafner: I read an article online, and the followed it to the Charter webpage, which states that Charter is going to be monitoring my surfing habits and placing ads into pages I'm viewing. I am wondering how soon this will happen to me personally.
TTD Grah : One moment please.
Robert Hafner: http://connect.charter.com/landing/op1.html [charter.com] Contains the information
Robert Hafner: that I am basing this question off of.
Robert Hafner: As well as http://consumerist.com/5008801/charter-to-begin-tracking-users-searches-and-inserting-targeted-ads [consumerist.com]
TTD Grah : Yes, that is our new update.
TTD Grah : One moment please as I download the document.
TTD Grah : Charter has formed a partnership with an industry-leader in online advertising, NebuAd (www.nebuad.com). NebuAd, through their advertising network, will display targeted advertisements to Charter High-Speed® Internet customers while they are surfing the Web. NebuAd does not collect and use personally identifiable information to deliver advertising. Customers will not see more ads - just ads that are more relevant to their interests that have been expressed through their web-surfing activity.
TTD Grah : The feature will be activated automatically for Charter HSI customers beginning in June 2008 in the following four Charter markets:
Newtown, Connecticut
Fort Worth, Texas
San Luis Obispo, California
Oxford, Massachusetts
Robert Hafner: So the ads are placed directly into websites I would normally view?
Robert Hafner: How do I opt-out for an entire household, with multiple computers and browsers?
Robert Hafner: Currently the only way to opt-out is by placing a cookie under each browser of each account of each computer, which is absolutely insane.
TTD Grah : The technology can actually often distinguish between different users on a shared computer and, therefore, can serve different ads to different users. Only a portion of the ads you see will be a function of the enhanced service - you will still see some ads that are served based on other criteria.
Robert Hafner: The question was were are those ads being placed- are they replacing other ads on websites, for instance?
Robert Hafner: And if so, how is the owner of the actual website going to be compensated?
TTD Grah : This site may appear depending on what are you trying to view online.
TTD Grah : This site will give you options on what to have according to what you need.
Robert Hafner: What site are you referring to?
TTD Grah : Say for example, you are surfing because you wish to purchase shoes online, this site will pop up and give you options to chose from.
TTD Grah : That is how it works.
TTD Grah : That is how it works.
TTD Grah : The site will not pop up everytime you go online.
Robert Hafner: So this only affects my traffic to
Re:Revoke common carrier status now (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Open-source technological solutions.... (Score:3, Informative)
The https protocol is fundamentally broken because of a serious flaw in the way it was designed. It is impossible to use virtual hosts with separate certs via https. This has pretty significant ramifications in terms of the number of additional IP addresses it would require for everyone to switch to https.
The alternative, of course, would be for the HTTP protocol to be redesigned to either A. allow an unencrypted request containing only the host part to be followed by a switch to an encrypted stream on the fly or B. allow an encrypted request with a generic host key to be followed by a switch to the host key of a specific VHOST on the fly after identifying the host but before making the actual request. Unfortunately, both of these are completely upside down from the way the HTTP protocol works, which sends the most specific request data first, followed by the host data. This is because support for VHOSTS was basically hacked onto the HTTP standard. Poorly.
While such a thing would be nice in theory, in practice, unless we move to IPv6 first, it isn't practical.
Re:This is what they are going to argue. (Score:3, Informative)
Fair use allows someone to alter their copy to their liking. The copyright gets infringed upon at the point of distribution. The bookstore would be redistributing.
Re:"Customer Care" Response (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Call to arms? (Score:5, Informative)
I couldn't help notice that the linked article doesn't use the word "spying" at all, but slashdot doesn't seem to mind upping the rhetorical ante in that regard. I'm not saying it ISN'T spying; I'm just saying the language is argumentative on purpose.
Here, I'll help you with the understanding of that...
Spying - [reference.com]
- 3. a person who seeks to obtain confidential information about the activities, plans, methods, etc., of an organization or person, esp. one who is employed for this purpose by a competitor: an industrial spy.Most Internet Users expect their traffic to be unmolested and not intercepted in typical usage.
- 8. to search for or examine something closely or carefully.
- 10. to discover or find out by observation or scrutiny (often fol. by out).
- 12. to inspect or examine or to search or look for closely or carefully.
Now, I don't know about you, but these being some of the definitions of spying, and these being the actions being described as being planned by the company, it would seem that the term spying is not just appropriate, but self-proclaimed via definition by the company itself. Maybe I missed something.InnerWeb