Imagine you’re on the phone with your doctor, discussing a very sensitive and private matter that requires your full attention. Suddenly in the middle of a sentence, your mobile phone provider injects a recording saying you’ve used 90 percent of your minutes for the month and to press 1 to contact customer service, and repeats the message until you either hit 1 or hit 2 to cancel.
Or you’re on a call with a buddy, talking about your favorite sports team. Suddenly you get several text messages with “special offers” from companies that sell jerseys and other sporting goods.
Unconscionable, right? Yet both scenarios play out on the Internet, in various degrees of insidiousness.
The first example above happens to an unfortunately large number of U.S. Internet users on a daily basis. Comcast and other ISPs “experimenting” with data caps inject JavaScript code into their customers’ data streams in order to display overlays on Web pages that inform them of data cap thresholds. They’ll even display notices that your cable modem may be eligible for replacement. And you can't opt out.
Think about it for a second: Your cable provider is monitoring your traffic and injecting its own code wherever it likes. This is not only obtrusive, but can cause significant problems with normal Web application function. It’s abhorrent on its face, but that hasn’t stopped companies from developing and deploying code to do it.
The second example is essentially how Google makes its money. You search for something (say, “Red Sox”) and you’ll see search results accompanied by ads for Red Sox tickets and merchandise. Web trackers do the same, which is why, if you searched for widgets on Amazon, you’ll see ads for widgets on completely unrelated websites. Of course, the difference in these examples is that you were purposefully seeking out these items, not merely discussing them with another person. This is an important distinction. (Remember: Gmail notes what you’re talking about in your email and produces ads based on that content; then again, you’re using the Gmail service for free.)
Either example is bad enough, but if we combine the two, we have a monster. We have an ISP that can and does inject its own code into data streams from third-party websites to deliver messages to its users. These could be the aforementioned data cap notifications or ads that hover above the website or even interstitial ads that cover half the page and frustrate the user, but appear to be served by the website that was visited, not the service provider. Of course, the ISP actively snoops on its users’ browsing to display those ads.
by Paul Venezia, InfoWorld | Read more:
Image: Thinkstock
Or you’re on a call with a buddy, talking about your favorite sports team. Suddenly you get several text messages with “special offers” from companies that sell jerseys and other sporting goods.Unconscionable, right? Yet both scenarios play out on the Internet, in various degrees of insidiousness.
The first example above happens to an unfortunately large number of U.S. Internet users on a daily basis. Comcast and other ISPs “experimenting” with data caps inject JavaScript code into their customers’ data streams in order to display overlays on Web pages that inform them of data cap thresholds. They’ll even display notices that your cable modem may be eligible for replacement. And you can't opt out.
Think about it for a second: Your cable provider is monitoring your traffic and injecting its own code wherever it likes. This is not only obtrusive, but can cause significant problems with normal Web application function. It’s abhorrent on its face, but that hasn’t stopped companies from developing and deploying code to do it.
The second example is essentially how Google makes its money. You search for something (say, “Red Sox”) and you’ll see search results accompanied by ads for Red Sox tickets and merchandise. Web trackers do the same, which is why, if you searched for widgets on Amazon, you’ll see ads for widgets on completely unrelated websites. Of course, the difference in these examples is that you were purposefully seeking out these items, not merely discussing them with another person. This is an important distinction. (Remember: Gmail notes what you’re talking about in your email and produces ads based on that content; then again, you’re using the Gmail service for free.)
Either example is bad enough, but if we combine the two, we have a monster. We have an ISP that can and does inject its own code into data streams from third-party websites to deliver messages to its users. These could be the aforementioned data cap notifications or ads that hover above the website or even interstitial ads that cover half the page and frustrate the user, but appear to be served by the website that was visited, not the service provider. Of course, the ISP actively snoops on its users’ browsing to display those ads.
by Paul Venezia, InfoWorld | Read more:
Image: Thinkstock
[ed. This article was written in 2015 and Comcast is still at it today (see: Are you aware? Comcast is injecting 400+ lines of JavaScript into web pages.]
