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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: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @05:28PM
> So how do they do that without intentionally compromising SSL on a massive scale?
They give you a software package like all ISPs have been doing since time immemorial. Then they slip in their own certs as part of the package. If you don't install their package your SSL content, but not meta-data, is opaque to them. But that will be a minority of users.
> And even if they duped unwitting customers into opting into such a program, wouldn't that be a DMCA violation?
No.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Hyperturtle on Thursday August 04 2016, @06:24PM
I concur with this...
Their software, when installed on an old NT 4.0 member server I had been configuring a mix of SMS 2.0 and Support.com service infrastructure on as part of my home lab (it also was a NAT gateway, before I set up a real router to do it... this was some time ago...) actually overwrote my support.com topology and installed over it with a Comcast based support initiative that actually used the support.com program.
It allows you to push software, do remote support--lots of things, not unlike SMS but in the same vein.
I was unbelievably pissed because the tech that did the comcast install essentially said you have to install this in order to get stuff to work.
The next time I had a comcast install (lightning blasted the leased modem...) I showed the guy a bunch of routers and he asked where he could put the disk. I said there is no CD drive on a cisco router. He asked how I install softare on it or surf the web. I said that its a router--I connect through it, I connect to Comcast with it, but I don't use it to actively access the internet.
Then he demanded I plug a PC into the cable modem directly because it was in violation of their terms, and I asked him to just give me the details so I can type them into the NIC settings. He wouldn't aquiese until I told him he could leave the CD with me and I'd sign off on 'customer promised to install software later'.
I have no doubts that they now put root certs and such on people's equipment -- it's harder to push that sort of thing onto a tablet (no cd rom drive right) but the comcast xfinity app probably requires it to change channels or something, so all of your household can get targeted ads if you install their apps..
For all we know, the in-home wifi puts you on an SSL connection via a GRE tunnel to some dark lair where they analyze everything while showing the lock on your browser, provided you even are allowed to see if you are on an https connection anymore with their defaults.