RalphTheWonderLlama writes "The trials of NebuAd by Charter Communications were halted after it gained the attention of Congressmen Ed Markey and Joe Barton. The online behavioral targeting system has been called "a 'man-in-the-middle attack' and various other unflattering names" but would certainly be an easy way for an ISP to cash in on client profiling."
PaisteUser points out MSNBC's coverage as well, according to which the ad-insertion scheme was dropped because of "concerns raised by customers."
by Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday June 25 2008, @02:01PM (#23938945)
From the article:
Charter has now agreed to delay any further rollout, though it won't abandon the plan entirely.
Elsewhere, I have read predictions that up to 10% of Internet traffic was going to be commercially monitored by the end of the year. It might be good for everybody to let friends and family know and to start making privacy-enhancement software easy to use and ubiquitous.
If people don't know about it, they're unlikely to raise a fuss and then we're all sunk.
I'll take a delay, and let the issued get aired, even if it is in Congress, who can't be trusted with those Internet Tubes.
Seriously-- Charter has no right, and it would take expensive and long term litigation to get them to stop it. I hope they learn, and others learn by the example, and that the sum is that it slows it all down.
Nonetheless, while I'd prefer that traffic payloads aren't analyzed, I fear they already are, in McLean Virginia.
I would prefer they just went ahead with it and caused a huge PR meltdown. Now they'll simply wait until Congress isn't paying any attention and try it again. They'll keep at it until this becomes the norm for internet service and their customers stop complaining.
A PR meltdown would be juicy, but wouldn't stop them. An implementation delay is as good as it gets for now, in the absence of litigation. The data is just too valuable.... and there's little privacy legislation preventing its nefarious use.
None of us were kidding ourselves to think we had privacy anyway, but fighting the good fight is still worth it. I would prefer that the current legislature do something, but it's filled with cowards, and not champions of the people that voted them in.
When dealing with a company that is generally not responsive to customer feedback, the only thing that they're likely to pay much attention to is lost business. If subscribers cancel their accounts and tell them why they are canceling that may be noticed. Those who can't cut the cord with them completely (due to lack of competing options) might still be able to reduce the customer count by arranging for neighbors to share connections via WiFi etc.
If they are selling advertising and there is a way to tell
Nice try, but Charter DOES have the right. It's almost certainly in the terms of service that their customers agreed to when they signed up. If the customers didn't like the terms, they shouldn't have agreed to them.
I hope they learn, and others learn by the example, and that the sum is that it slows it all down.
If you want the companies to "learn", stop buying their services when you don't like the terms they put on it. No amount of lawsuits, legislation, and con
The TOS that people sign don't abrogate their right to privacy, especially with other individuals with whom they communicate who are not party to the TOS in any way. The Charter TOS may in fact be illegal. IANAL, but deep inspection is a radical and unexpected step!
Charter, unlike say AT&T, is usually the sole provider in their own markets for cable, and so there is no competition; it's not a matter of hey-- let's go with TW, Cox, Comcast, etc. That's not the way cable plays, although an attempt to do t
Charter, unlike say AT&T, is usually the sole provider in their own markets for cable, and so there is no competition; it's not a matter of hey-- let's go with TW, Cox, Comcast, etc. That's not the way cable plays, although an attempt to do this years ago was tried.
That's unfortunate, but I don't see why it matters. If you're willing to sign over your privacy for internet access, then your privacy isn't that important to you. You still voluntarily agreed to the TOS. It's not like you'll die withou
That's unfortunate, but I don't see why it matters. If you're willing to sign over your privacy for internet access, then your privacy isn't that important to you.
Or, y'know, some of us aren't interested in drawing false dichotomies between privacy and Internet access.
Congress isn't the right place to settle your local bullshit that 99.9% of the country doesn't care about.
Except for precedence. If Charter gets away with this kind of shit, then there's nothing stopping Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, et. al. from implementing the same system. We need a national precedent (in the form of a court ruling or legislation) set early on in this, and Congress is a perfectly valid place to pursue that.
Or, y'know, some of us aren't interested in drawing false dichotomies between privacy and Internet access.
It's not a false dichotomy. If Charter only sells internet access that violates the user's privacy, your only options for buying internet access from them are "Buy it" or "Don't buy it". Internet access without privacy violation isn't a product Charter sells. You shouldn't be able to take them to court and force them to sell something any more than I should be able to take you to court and force y
I've seen plenty of coverage on this, but no technical details on how it would actually be implemented beyond there being a mysterious "box" at the ISP. Is it, or will it be, possible to block or restrict this device from tampering with traffic? Or are we pretty much at the mercy of the providers here?
In order to block the "feature", you had to install a cookie. For each browser. On every machine. Once the cookie was removed for whatever reason, back to the URL to download it again.
I've heard that they would probably just ignore the cookie. That or redirect the cookie tagged traffic to the NSA saying "We found another tin-foil-hatter for you."
Your only hope would be to encrypt your traffic, which would raise a few flags if they are really watching you that closely.
I'm a charter customer and received a letter in the mail with instructions how to opt out. It was fairly easy but did require a few minutes to do. Woulda been much nicer had it been an opt-in option, instead.
Right, but if you read deeper, it sets a cookie on your browser to not display targeted ads. It still tracks your behavior, just doesn't show the ads. Charters privacy policy also states that they will turn over any and all information to law enforcement or a subpoena. Also, if you ever clear your cookies (as many, many people do, and tools like spy-bot do) you will have to remember to fill out that form again.
It isn't a "would be" implemented. It's already done. Basically, there is no way to prevent your ISP from altering your traffic, because everything that comes over the wire passes through them. You have no way of telling whether the ads served on a website are the ads that that website sold or whether the ISP inserted them without controlling both ends of the communication.
Dan Kaminsky developed a method to detect this kind of tampering , which at least can prevent ISPs from hiding the fact that they're d
Privacy will only prevent people like us from advertising to the families of cable company executives. We need 24/7 surveillance of all their activities, where their children go to school, what their wives buy on-line and in grocery stores. We can analyze that data on an open public website. Send out google vans to record their every movement, and inundate them with your advertising messages. Roll out billboard trucks to park in front of their houses.
Fight fire with fire. Fight the RIAA laws with laws. Figh
I particularly like the little bit about how they will hold off on implementation while these important privacy concerns can be addressed.
Who wants to bet that addressing this means waiting under a rock until no one's looking and then going forward with substantially the same nonsense?
I agree, it will be a "wait until they forget" approach or "wait until we pay off enough people that no one can do anything regardless" instead.
Either way, if it should someone make it out, then the best way to fight back is to attack the wallet and make all the data collected "useless" in a sense.
This site uses a small script and the clients who visit with their web browser as a tool to visit junk, random, or non-existent sites so that they won't be able to collect any meaningful data. Get enough pe
"The trials of NebuAd by Charter Communications were halted after it gained the attention of Congressmen Ed Markey and Joe Barton.
So, hundreds (possibly thousands) of angry complaints by your customers get ignored, but as soon as someone from Washington calls, things start happening?
The congressmen can actually do something. The customers are stuck in a high speed internet monopoly. My parents have Charter internet and it basically works when it feels like it. But their other options are dial-up or satellite. Charter doesn't care about the customers because it doesn't have to.
My parents have Charter internet and it basically works when it feels like it. But their other options are dial-up or satellite. Charter doesn't care about the customers because it doesn't have to.
I have charter internet, and actually it's pretty fucking awesome.
When I heard about Charter's disgusting NebuAds plan, I signed up for ATT's least expensive DSL plan - 768k for $20/mo, simultaneously with my Charter account. After a month I intend to choose one. My desire is to switch to ATT, first in order to
From a high price of $16 a share in January 2002 to closing at $1.12 today, a loss of 93%! Not too far away from being just another Worldcom or Enron. Clearly this is a company that knows what it's doing, and means business!
Looks like NebuAd isn't just eavesdropping on user behavior, but actively creating fake traffic:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/23/topolski_takes_on_nebuad/ [theregister.co.uk]
As if the Post Office were not only to read your mail, but to rewrite it for you on the sly. That's beyond Orwellian.
In many areas the local government has granted specific companies exclusive rights to operate coax runs, that's a monopoly on cable internet service in that specific area, no other company can come in and offer cable internet service. The same is true of DSL, whoever owns the lines can jack up prices and neglect to upgrade their network, and they do.
The effect is that you don't have true competition, in any given area you have at most 2-3 competitors between classes of service, and its obviously not enough.
You turned this into a rant against open source in only a few posts. Nice.
First, most of the coax and copper rolled out was put in place a LONG time ago, and the costs for doing so have been recovered many times over by the owner. Second, there was a rule that phone companies had to at least lease the lines at fair prices to other providers, not free as you tried to slip in to the argument, but fair competitive prices so that the line owner was compensated while still allowing for competition. That is gone
Get's a little old, however, hearing people throwing around the term "monopoly" or "monopolistic" when they really don't know what the FUCK they are talking about.
Most of the places I've lived, there was only one choice for terrestrial high-speed connections. The only other "option" was something like IDSL, expensive and slower than high speed offerings. Satellite is an option for anyone that doesn't mind round trip times of 1 second that creep up to 3 seconds in high-usage time, often with really low c
Satellite is an option for anyone that doesn't mind round trip times of 1 second that creep up to 3 seconds in high-usage time,
Also in order to use this you need a large antenna which has line of sight to the satellite. In some cases this might be physically impossible. In other cases landlords/local government may make the installation difficult.
Last week, we pointed out that NebuAd shares five high-ranking employees in common with notorious spyware outfit Claria Corp. (nee Gator Corp). And now we've learned that they share a sixth. NebuAd's Washington DC counsel, Reed Freeman, was Claria's chief privacy officer.
Well, no wonder you in the US seem to have such a hard time weeding the liberalist cancer out of your system, since those damnable liberalists - Thomas Jefferson, James Madison et al. - were infecting your nation with the ideas of, among other liberalist thinkers, John Locke and Adam Smith, from the very beginning.
(sorry for feeding the trolls, I just couldn't quite pass this one by. I can't fathom how the term "liberal" can be so mangled in contemporary USA.)
Customers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure what your point is.
Why would the investors be concerned? Because it would drive away customers. Same fucking thing.
Delayed != Halted (Score:4, Insightful)
From the article:
Charter has now agreed to delay any further rollout, though it won't abandon the plan entirely.
Elsewhere, I have read predictions that up to 10% of Internet traffic was going to be commercially monitored by the end of the year. It might be good for everybody to let friends and family know and to start making privacy-enhancement software easy to use and ubiquitous.
If people don't know about it, they're unlikely to raise a fuss and then we're all sunk.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll take a delay, and let the issued get aired, even if it is in Congress, who can't be trusted with those Internet Tubes.
Seriously-- Charter has no right, and it would take expensive and long term litigation to get them to stop it. I hope they learn, and others learn by the example, and that the sum is that it slows it all down.
Nonetheless, while I'd prefer that traffic payloads aren't analyzed, I fear they already are, in McLean Virginia.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
A PR meltdown would be juicy, but wouldn't stop them. An implementation delay is as good as it gets for now, in the absence of litigation. The data is just too valuable.... and there's little privacy legislation preventing its nefarious use.
Re: (Score:2)
None of us were kidding ourselves to think we had privacy anyway, but fighting the good fight is still worth it. I would prefer that the current legislature do something, but it's filled with cowards, and not champions of the people that voted them in.
Another angle of attack (Score:3, Interesting)
When dealing with a company that is generally not responsive to customer feedback, the only thing that they're likely to pay much attention to is lost business. If subscribers cancel their accounts and tell them why they are canceling that may be noticed. Those who can't cut the cord with them completely (due to lack of competing options) might still be able to reduce the customer count by arranging for neighbors to share connections via WiFi etc.
If they are selling advertising and there is a way to tell
Re: (Score:2)
Nice try, but Charter DOES have the right. It's almost certainly in the terms of service that their customers agreed to when they signed up. If the customers didn't like the terms, they shouldn't have agreed to them.
If you want the companies to "learn", stop buying their services when you don't like the terms they put on it. No amount of lawsuits, legislation, and con
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sorry, don't let pesky facts get in your way.
If people feel cheated, it's their own fault for agreeing to the terms they didn't really agree with.
In any case, it's a 5 minute phone call to cancel your service, so why waste everybody's tax money by getting congress involved?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The TOS that people sign don't abrogate their right to privacy, especially with other individuals with whom they communicate who are not party to the TOS in any way. The Charter TOS may in fact be illegal. IANAL, but deep inspection is a radical and unexpected step!
Charter, unlike say AT&T, is usually the sole provider in their own markets for cable, and so there is no competition; it's not a matter of hey-- let's go with TW, Cox, Comcast, etc. That's not the way cable plays, although an attempt to do t
Re: (Score:2)
That's unfortunate, but I don't see why it matters. If you're willing to sign over your privacy for internet access, then your privacy isn't that important to you. You still voluntarily agreed to the TOS. It's not like you'll die withou
Re: (Score:2)
That's unfortunate, but I don't see why it matters. If you're willing to sign over your privacy for internet access, then your privacy isn't that important to you.
Or, y'know, some of us aren't interested in drawing false dichotomies between privacy and Internet access.
Congress isn't the right place to settle your local bullshit that 99.9% of the country doesn't care about.
Except for precedence. If Charter gets away with this kind of shit, then there's nothing stopping Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, et. al. from implementing the same system. We need a national precedent (in the form of a court ruling or legislation) set early on in this, and Congress is a perfectly valid place to pursue that.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not a false dichotomy. If Charter only sells internet access that violates the user's privacy, your only options for buying internet access from them are "Buy it" or "Don't buy it". Internet access without privacy violation isn't a product Charter sells. You shouldn't be able to take them to court and force them to sell something any more than I should be able to take you to court and force y
Re: (Score:2)
I'm well aware. Here are two solutions to the problem that are better than involving Congress:
Personally, I like the second option.
Unless you live in a very large city, the chances are good that a couple dozen
Possible to Block? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen plenty of coverage on this, but no technical details on how it would actually be implemented beyond there being a mysterious "box" at the ISP. Is it, or will it be, possible to block or restrict this device from tampering with traffic? Or are we pretty much at the mercy of the providers here?
Re:Possible to Block? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Your only hope would be to encrypt your traffic, which would raise a few flags if they are really watching you that closely.
Just fool them (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/~dhowe/trackmenot/ [nyu.edu]
Re:Possible to Block? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that "opt-in" option wouldn't get exercised much, hence the opt-out requirement. Seriously, who chooses to be spied on?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It isn't a "would be" implemented. It's already done. Basically, there is no way to prevent your ISP from altering your traffic, because everything that comes over the wire passes through them. You have no way of telling whether the ads served on a website are the ads that that website sold or whether the ISP inserted them without controlling both ends of the communication.
Dan Kaminsky developed a method to detect this kind of tampering , which at least can prevent ISPs from hiding the fact that they're d
Scurry under a rock (Score:5, Insightful)
I particularly like the little bit about how they will hold off on implementation while these important privacy concerns can be addressed.
Who wants to bet that addressing this means waiting under a rock until no one's looking and then going forward with substantially the same nonsense?
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone remember TIA? That's basically what happened there, too.
Executives Need Advertisements Too (Score:2)
Privacy will only prevent people like us from advertising to the families of cable company executives. We need 24/7 surveillance of all their activities, where their children go to school, what their wives buy on-line and in grocery stores. We can analyze that data on an open public website. Send out google vans to record their every movement, and inundate them with your advertising messages. Roll out billboard trucks to park in front of their houses.
Fight fire with fire. Fight the RIAA laws with laws. Figh
Re: (Score:2)
I particularly like the little bit about how they will hold off on implementation while these important privacy concerns can be addressed.
Who wants to bet that addressing this means waiting under a rock until no one's looking and then going forward with substantially the same nonsense?
I agree, it will be a "wait until they forget" approach or "wait until we pay off enough people that no one can do anything regardless" instead.
Either way, if it should someone make it out, then the best way to fight back is to attack the wallet and make all the data collected "useless" in a sense.
This site uses a small script and the clients who visit with their web browser as a tool to visit junk, random, or non-existent sites so that they won't be able to collect any meaningful data. Get enough pe
Hundreds of angry customers vs. 2 Congressmen (Score:5, Insightful)
What awesome customer service!
Chip H.
Re:Hundreds of angry customers vs. 2 Congressmen (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
My parents have Charter internet and it basically works when it feels like it. But their other options are dial-up or satellite. Charter doesn't care about the customers because it doesn't have to.
I have charter internet, and actually it's pretty fucking awesome.
When I heard about Charter's disgusting NebuAds plan, I signed up for ATT's least expensive DSL plan - 768k for $20/mo, simultaneously with my Charter account. After a month I intend to choose one. My desire is to switch to ATT, first in order to
Paul Allen (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
From a high price of $16 a share in January 2002 to closing at $1.12 today, a loss of 93%! Not too far away from being just another Worldcom or Enron. Clearly this is a company that knows what it's doing, and means business!
Not just eavesdropping, but spoofing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The internet is a utility (Score:5, Insightful)
If ISPs are going to keep their de facto monopoly status, they should be prevented from doing anything buy carry data, by legal means if necessary.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
"I didn't try to download any child porn! Charter put it there!"
Let Charter, DHS, and pissed off moms battle it out - hopefully they'd annihilate each other.
Re: (Score:2)
Choosing between cable, dsl, or satellite, or dial-up, and pretending this is competition is ridiculous.
This is like claiming only Ford cars can drive on the main roads in certain cities, and Toyotas must grow wings and fly instead.
Re: (Score:2)
In many areas the local government has granted specific companies exclusive rights to operate coax runs, that's a monopoly on cable internet service in that specific area, no other company can come in and offer cable internet service. The same is true of DSL, whoever owns the lines can jack up prices and neglect to upgrade their network, and they do.
The effect is that you don't have true competition, in any given area you have at most 2-3 competitors between classes of service, and its obviously not enough.
Re: (Score:2)
You turned this into a rant against open source in only a few posts. Nice.
First, most of the coax and copper rolled out was put in place a LONG time ago, and the costs for doing so have been recovered many times over by the owner. Second, there was a rule that phone companies had to at least lease the lines at fair prices to other providers, not free as you tried to slip in to the argument, but fair competitive prices so that the line owner was compensated while still allowing for competition. That is gone
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of the places I've lived, there was only one choice for terrestrial high-speed connections. The only other "option" was something like IDSL, expensive and slower than high speed offerings. Satellite is an option for anyone that doesn't mind round trip times of 1 second that creep up to 3 seconds in high-usage time, often with really low c
Re: (Score:2)
Also in order to use this you need a large antenna which has line of sight to the satellite. In some cases this might be physically impossible. In other cases landlords/local government may make the installation difficult.
All you need to know abut NebuAd (Score:5, Informative)
Tagging (Score:2)
BTW, who does the tags? Can one with mod points add tags or is it only cowboy editors named Neal?
legitimated? (Score:3, Funny)
Oh no... (Score:2)
Certainly [slashdot.org] not that [slashdot.org] Edward [slashdot.org] Markey! [slashdot.org]
Christopher Soghoian [dubfire.net] loves hearing the name Edward "barking rabid" Markey even more than I do. [google.com]
Re:Notes on Liberalism (Score:4, Insightful)
(sorry for feeding the trolls, I just couldn't quite pass this one by. I can't fathom how the term "liberal" can be so mangled in contemporary USA.)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When the average of your population reads at a basic or below-basic level, it is quite fathomable indeed.
To quote the late great George Carlin, "half of them are even stupider!"
Re: (Score:2)
Crazy sex is so totally worth it, though.