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Stuck with Comcast? You may get stuck some more!
Ars Technica , Gizmodo, ZDNet, and a host of others are reporting that Comcast claims that the FCC has no authority to limit or prohibit the internet provider from distributing web histories to advertisers.
From the Ars Technica article:
As the Federal Communications Commission debates new privacy rules for Internet service providers, Comcast has urged the commission to let ISPs offer different prices based on whether customers opt into systems that share their data and deliver personalized ads.
Comcast executives met with FCC officials last week, and "urged that the Commission allow business models offering discounts or other value to consumers in exchange for allowing ISPs to use their data," Comcast wrote in an ex parte filing that describes the meeting. (MediaPost covered the filing yesterday.)
AT&T is the biggest Internet provider offering such a plan. AT&T's "Internet Preferences" program reroutes customers' Web browsing to an in-house traffic scanning platform, analyzes the customers' search and browsing history, and then uses the results to deliver personalized ads to websites. With Internet Preferences enabled, AT&T customers can pay as little as $70 per month for 1Gbps fiber-to-the-home service, but those who don't opt into Internet Preferences must pay at least $29 a month extra.
[Continues...]
The Washington Post adds:
Consumer groups who oppose Comcast have said that Internet providers have a unique vantage point over everything an Internet user does online. For example, Netflix's intelligence about its users is largely limited to what customers do on its own platform, with little visibility into how those same people watch videos on Hulu or Amazon. (Amazon.com founder Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Internet providers, however, can detect when a subscriber visits all three sites.
Many analysts expect the FCC to finalize its privacy rules for Internet providers this year. But there are a lot of details to be hashed out, including whether Internet providers will be able to share subscriber data by default with marketers or whether they will be required to first obtain customers' explicit approval.
It's still unclear whether Comcast has actual, concrete plans to roll out a discount, data-driven Internet program. But what is clear is that the company has at least considered the possibility and wants looser rules for the industry that would permit such plans. A Comcast spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gizmodo puts it succinctly: "Comcast has logged yet another tally in the competition for Shittiest Company In Existence."
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday August 04 2016, @05:22PM
So do they allow you to use a VPN? Seem like if they charge more to stop violating your privacy than a VPN service, the solution becomes obvious. Just install the VPN in your router (you don't use your ISP's bugridden crap, right?) so it protects all of your traffic.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday August 04 2016, @06:31PM
They can't completely. You just need a business class service with them, and at that point, VPN away to your heart's content. Moreover, if they all disallow VPNs on residential lines there will be a large scale revolt. Considering how many businesses rely on residential VPNs like remote support desks at employees homes, I don't see Comcast having much success in banning the VPN. It's not merely computers, or even just routers, but Enterprise IP phones too. Grandstream IP Phones, even at their lower level offerings, all have OpenVPN built into the firmware. Businesses use that to establish some security on the phone line, while still placing it in a relatively unsecured residential network. Perhaps the real question may be, how *many* different VPNs will the ban at once?
Yeah, spot on with the VPN. I unfortunately have Comcast at the moment (absolutely no other options worked; Tried them all, repeatedly) and am not worried either. All of my web browsing occurs in Norway, and anything really interesting is being transported along SSH tunnels protected with strong encryption back to me on Comcast's networks. They see random noise unless they've spent millions of dollars on hardware to do DPI against encrypted traffic to make their educated guesses as to what it is.
I'm perfectly fine with having my bill lowered by $29 to willingly share with them all of my encrypted packets. Go nuts, dudes. Truthfully, I'm just shocked they're asking for permission in the first place.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday August 04 2016, @06:37PM
Considering how many businesses rely on residential VPNs like remote support desks at employees homes
Comcast would make the excuse that such homes should subscribe to business-class service.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Thursday August 04 2016, @06:48PM
They can fucking go for it. The employees will tell their employers to compensate them for the connection costs, which may or may not be covered by the employer. That puts employers against Comcast, and they actually have means to make Comcast miserable. Like compensating their employees connection... at a possibly lower rate... with a competitor that allows VPNs.
If they make it a business issue, they will reap what they sow.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Pino P on Thursday August 04 2016, @06:55PM
The employees will tell their employers to compensate them for the connection costs
Provided they even are employees. If they're contractors, employer^W clients will just tell them to eat the cost.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday August 04 2016, @07:38PM
That's a good point too. I don't see IT, especially guys like me, taking down an entire OpenVPN implementation simply because Comcast wants to be an asshole :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @08:45PM
*ears perk up* What is this "competitor" you speak of?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday August 05 2016, @12:27AM
Well, if you can handle the latency I understand that satellite access if available in most places.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday August 05 2016, @03:56AM
Well, most people wouldn't want to switch to satellite if cable is available. It's not even remotely comparable, which is why it's complete nonsense when monopolistic ISPs like Comcast like to claim they're not monopolies because satellite providers exist.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Friday August 05 2016, @06:26AM
Well, if you can handle the latency I understand that satellite access if available in most places.
The latency, the ridiculously low bandwidth caps, and the frequent loss of all connectivity because of weather conditions. Oh, and you also get stuck behind carrier-grade NAT, so not only is it a pain in the ass to do anything requiring you open ports (VPN or gtfo, basically), you're also randomly banned or blocked from half the internet because people still think IP addresses are a good way to verify identity.
And for all that, you still get price gouged (worse than even the likes of comcast) and terrible service, because they know if you're using them, it's because you have even less choice than the usual comcast-or-someone-else-shitty options.
Fuck satellite internet, seriously. You're better off tethering to your mobile phone if it gets a signal. Hell, even dialup is better to use most of the time, except for shit like OS updates. And no, I'm not just talking out of my ass on this; I'm stuck using it right now and it's the worst goddamn thing for internet access. Don't even pretend it's a viable option for anything other than "I literally have no other choice."
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday August 05 2016, @06:39PM
Thank you. I have no personal experience with it, and this time is the first I have heard such unfavorable reports. Previously it was all complaints about latency.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Friday August 05 2016, @09:13PM
I figure I'll elaborate on this, since most people have probably never had to deal with it. Also, I promise, the grumpiness of my post was aimed at satellite internet in general, not at you for mentioning it. :)
The latency is the first thing you notice, so it's the one that stands out for complaints, which is why it's the one that gets brought up first. It's also a much bigger problem than most people expect before dealing with it. Obviously, it ruins things like online gaming, but it also makes remote shells virtually unusable*.
It also has a huge impact on browsing, because you get that latency (~750-1500ms round-trip) on every domain you hit when loading a page. First, you get the delay for the DNS query, then request the data, then start to get it, then repeat that for every resource a page uses. That becomes a nightmare on modern sites that can hit dozens of sites, so a page load can still take 20-30s (or more) despite having a (supposedly) 10mbit connection. That's for a "normal" bloated as hell site, of course; something like SN loads a lot faster since it's not loaded with third-party shit. The providers try to offer various kinds of "acceleration" tricks, like compression and caching, but that's useless for HTTPS, dynamic sites, and sometimes it's even slower than normal if their server for it is overloaded (at peak hours, for example).
And, of course, that's all based on good weather. It gets even worse when the weather's foul; I've seen it get up to 90% packetloss and 50,000 ms (and higher!) pings during a storm. If it's snowing that's even worse, and any accumulation on the dish kills your connection until it either melts (which can take days) or you clean it off yourself. Which, depending on where the dish has to be installed to get line-of-sight, can involve icy roof climbing. (That's the situation here, except it's sometimes possible to clean the dish off from a second-floor window with a broom.)
That's the shitty stuff that's just flat out insurmountable. It's just part of dealing with satellite internet, the stuff you just can't get around, and it's already a deal killer, but then the ISPs make it even worse.
The handful of satellite ISPs all seem to give you about the same bandwidth caps, and have for years. It's slowly improved over time, but they move in lockstep, and the caps are barely better than mobile data plans. It's actually getting worse in some ways! The general setup is that you get a certain "data allowance" for most of the day, and then a "bonus" period at overnight hours, like I think it's 2am-8am right now for me. That bonus period used to be unlimited but they started enforcing a second data cap on it, so for example, I get 10GB/mo for the majority of the day, and 50GB/mo from 2am to 8am, for something like $60/mo (USD). Doubling that 10GB to 20GB would increase the price to something like $130/mo (USD) and it doesn't even improve the overnight bandwidth noticeably (if at all). And if you go over the cap you get throttled down to barely-over-dialup speeds, while still dealing with that awesome latency.
The idea there is you can schedule bulk downloads overnight and do your light use stuff during the day, but it doesn't work out well. Windows 10, for example, no longer allows scheduling overnight updates; it picks a time it wants and downloads then, and fuck you if you want anything else**. You can schedule Steam games to update overnight, but if a game has an update queued you lose the ability to play it for the day. (There's an override option but it's not reliable). And Steam itself will update whenever it damn well pleases, regardless of your schedule settings. Of course, you can't pre-download stuff from Netflix or other streaming services, and random one-off viewing of things on sites like YouTube is a pain in the ass like that. Sure, you can do it, but it sucks when someone goes "hey here's a thing! check it out!" and you have to go "Okay I'll download it tonight and watch tomorrow" :P
As for the carrier-grade NAT, I can't remember how it is among satellite providers, but it's been in use at this one for years and it's as annoying as you'd think. The IP banning thing is less common than it used to be but it still crops up sometimes. The real problem is you can't open ports, period, which blocks a lot of useful things. I had to start using openvpn to a VPS I pay for just to get something that basic to work again.
The modem's shit, too, and tends to need rebooting often. Not satellite-specific but it's not as easy to switch out for another one as far as I know, so hey, have fun losing your connection at "random". And by random I mean almost always during the 2am-8am bonus period, preventing you from using that "extra" cap you're supposed to have for updates and the like.
This isn't the first time I've been here; I just moved back to the rural area where my grandparents are, and am stuck on it again. It's really painful now, because I just went from one of the better options (fios) to one of the worst. I used to mitigate it some by using dialup at the same time and manually routing certain traffic over satellite, other traffic over dialup.
Yes, it's bad enough that I preferred the dialup most of the time the last time I was here. Sure, images took forever to load, but at least I had the text parts of the page while I waited; on satellite it's just blank space while waiting on the latency. Plus using noscript and an ad blocker helped cut a lot of the fat out.
* The latency is so bad that not even mosh [mit.edu], an ssh alternative made to deal with high-latency connections, helps very much. I had to start using mosh --predict=experimental to enable permanent local echo (very glitchy, visually) because the default prediction methods aren't sufficient.
** You can set Win10 connections to "metered" and then they won't download updates at all. Good for bandwidth but bad for security. Unless you're on a wired connection, where the setting isn't available; wifi or gtfo. There's a registry setting you can change (and reboot after), which is a pain in the ass.
(Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Saturday August 06 2016, @06:38AM
I've been where you are; Satellite and ready to die. Ditto on how terrible it is, which is even more fun when you have 5 people wanting to experience the terribleness. Hooking up a Wi-Fi AP for guests almost seems sadistic personally. Trying to use a SSH connection to fix remote servers? Very difficult was my experience too.
How far are you from a normal land-based Internet connection? You could gauge interest and start a small WISP cooperative. I'm involved in that and we have some links that are 15-20 miles apart. It's all line of sight too, so you may need relays. All said and done though? Providing 8mb/s down and 2mb/s up standard and latency is typically under 40ms for everything. Main links are gigabit and very low latency.
If you don't want to go the coop route, and have line of sight to a friend with Internet, get yourself a pair of Mimosa's. It'll be pricey, but you'll be able to stream HD video from your friends media center and can saturate a FIOS connection :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday August 06 2016, @05:56PM
Yeah, I'm sharing it right now too and it makes it even worse. :/
I'm not completely certain but I think I'm something like five or six miles from where the landlines stop. maybe up to nine, but that's probably the maximum, since that's about the distance to the middle of what passes for a town around here.
The real problem is it's a hilly area, lots of trees, and most of the land between here and broadband is owned by people that are just holding the land to keep anyone else from using it for anything, or people that don't care at all about internet access. So, getting anybody to cooperate for better connectivity is basically impossible, and there's no LoS to anything. Can't even get a mobile signal for a few miles around the house. :|
It sucks so much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @09:14PM
Sure, yeah, we'll knock 29$ off your service if you sign something that lets us inspect all your traffic. We're also increasing the prices of all service by 40$ that month, in a total coincidence.
- A recent ex-employee of Cocmast
(Score: 1) by shipofgold on Thursday August 04 2016, @08:41PM
I would think it is pretty hard to ban openvpn over port 443. That would be like banning HTTPS.
(Score: 2) by gidds on Friday August 05 2016, @03:39PM
This is probably an ignorant question, but isn't that just shifting the problem?
If ISPs aren't trustworthy (and they clearly aren't), despite being paid, then why should VPN providers be? They have exactly the same opportunities.
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday August 05 2016, @07:07PM
Some people use VPNs to avoid geoblocking but others use them specifically to increase their privacy. If a VPN provider gets a repuatation for poor privacy practices, its customers can readily change to another provider.
I suspect that a greater proportion of an ISP's customers (as compared to those of a VPN) won't care about their own privacy. Those who do care have few other ISPs to choose from.
(Score: 2) by gidds on Saturday August 06 2016, @08:23AM
Isn't that the problem, then, rather than any inherent security/privacy advantage of VPNs?
(Here in the UK, that's not really an issue, as we can generally choose from a wide range of ADSL, cable, and wireless broadband providers.)
After all, your traffic must hit the general Internet at some point, whether it's your ISP's connection, your VPN provider's connection, a Tor exit node*, or whatever, so you have to trust someone.
(* The advantage of Tor being, AIUI, that that node can't tell who you are.)
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday August 06 2016, @10:11PM
With a VPN, one's ISP can't log the sites one connects to, nor can those sites log one's "real" IP address, which could be a clue to one's location. You're quite right to point out that the VPN provider does have that information. I suppose people chain VPNs to avoid that.