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Internet slowdowns at home aren't just annoying anymore. They can be hazardous to your health or dangerous if you're in an area that freezes.
Internet service provider Armstrong Zoom has roughly a million subscribers in the Northeastern part of the U.S. and is keen to punish those it believes are using file-sharing services.
The ISP's response to allegedly naughty customers is bandwidth throttling -- which is when an ISP intentionally slows down your internet service based on what you're doing online. In this case, when said ISP believes you're doing something illegal.
As part of its throttling routine, Armstrong Zoom's warning letter openly threatens its suspected file-sharing customers about its ability to use or control their webcams and connected thermostats.
The East Coast company stated: "Please be advised that this may affect other services which you may have connected to your internet service, such as the ability to control your thermostat remotely or video monitoring services."
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/05/pirates-risk-being-left-in-the-cold/
(Score: 4, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Monday January 08 2018, @08:30PM (5 children)
The headline is wrong and laughably bad but what do you expect from a low common denominator "tech" site like engadget. The ISP isn't fucking with your dumb IoT devices. They are simply a casualty of having your service throttled.
This is a double warning to anyone looking to do stupid shit like control/monitor your home over the INTERNET or pirate awful television shows and films.
(Score: 5, Touché) by maxwell demon on Monday January 08 2018, @08:33PM (2 children)
You mean they make an exception for those who only pirate excellent stuff? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Monday January 08 2018, @09:28PM (1 child)
> You mean they make an exception for those who only pirate excellent stuff? :-)
Yeah, but they get to decide whose opinion defines excellent, and you have to guess.
[for example: excellent may be "stuff where rights holders are little guys with no lawyers who are not members of rights holders lawyering clubs etc."]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday January 09 2018, @12:36PM
Dooood! What's mine say?
Sweet! What's......
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 08 2018, @08:49PM
This is nothing new since early dialup days. I had one ISP who started getting overwhelmed with customers, unable to provide acceptable service. I habitually downloaded newsgroups overnight, in large part because their bandwidth was so laughably inadequate that it took 8 hours to get what should have been 5 minutes over a 1200 baud modem. Nothing illegal, wasn't posting much at all, just hooked up at bedtime and read the content in the morning. They terminated me for "violating their TOS" - I pressed them on what part of the TOS, they declined to specify just parroted "violating the TOS."
'salright, I was on month-to-month with them anyway. Friend of mine had signed up for a whole year to get the 12th month free - all 11 months he paid for were worth what he paid for the 12th - they never did get the bandwidth sorted, e-mails would transfer below 30cps, Netscape was completely unusable.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @09:19PM
> This is a double warning to anyone looking to do stupid shit like control/monitor your home over the INTERNET or pirate awful television shows and films.
Also a warning to those who have kids or open wifi networks, those who let their friends and family use a closed wifi network, and grandmas who get accused of torrenting the latest blockbuster without ever hearing about torrent or having the client installed. Hey, if they weren't guilty, they wouldn't be accused, amirite? Freeze to death, dirty pirate grandma. (Hint: the hit-rate of copyright trolls accusing correct people is abysmally low.)