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HTTPS Everywhere can't happen too soon. This is abusive. Imagine if anyone else had access to pus you notifications by intercepting your communications. Imag

HTTPS Everywhere can't happen too soon. This is abusive. Imagine if anyone else had access to pus you notifications by intercepting your communications. Imagine Uncle Sam interrupting your calls announcing you haven't submitted your tax returns yet. Because that's basically what's happening here.

userbinator 11y ago
HTTPS is good and all, but the real problem is ISPs which don't want to be nothing but a transport provider. Every IP packet I send into their network should end up at its destination, with best effort, completely unmodified, and vice-versa. That said, in my experience datacenter and enterprise ISPs tend to be far more "pure", so if you want a truly unmolested connection a possible solution could be to use a VPN to a server that terminates in one of those.
- Laforet 11y ago
  A lot of ISPs are anything but, including business or datacenter connections. I had to deal with one of them using transparent DNS proxies without disclosing the fact. Only found out when something broken on their end. The only way to have functional DNS is to tunnel it over another protocol because their equipment will intercept DNS queries to any server and reply with a bogus IP.
- paulojreis 11y ago
  > but the real problem is ISPs which don't want to be nothing but a transport provider. This is very, very true. Anyone who has worked at a telco should've heard the "we don't want to be a dumb pipe" argument. The thing is: they can't be more than that! I don't want their applications, they are not very good at doing applications. I don't want their content, they don't seem to get content production at all. Even their research, it has become less and less relevant. As a customer, I'd rather see all that money spent on efficient ways of transporting bytes, or even directly subsidizing the customer bill (so that they can support smaller ARPUs). But no; I have to pay extra to support the entertainment of their engineers, in order to get sub-optimal apps and content.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    It's the other way round: the extra stuff is there as "market differentiation" in order to justify the high prices and prevent commoditisation. The problem is that if you're selling a commodity the price ends up close to the marginal cost of production. Whereas every company wants to have some unique IP they can charge monopoly rent prices for, like Apple. Same with vendor crapware on phones and PCs. I call this stuff "value subtracted software".
  - charlesdm 11y ago
    That's exactly the point. The reason they don't want to be a dumb pipe, is because they want to use that to justify increasing their ARPU.
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    Don't ISPs give up common-carrier protections for things like copyright when they interfere with the traffic? This should make them liable for contributory infringement on any copyright infringements by their customers that they don't take action against.
    - tajen 11y ago
      I like your thinking. So including ads/warnings/popups is effectively making a derivative work on material that Comcast doesn't own. They become liable for copyright infringement.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Frankly the whole "don't want to be dumb pipe" thing is a telco variant of "perpetual growth". Frankly at one point or other every large company in every mature market has to contend with having reached their growth limit. There are only so many customers in this world for the products and services offered. The only place that could grow forever is Wall Street, by piling derivatives upon derivatives and passing them round like hot potatoes. Everywhere else has to contend with us being on a physically finite planet.
    - malka 11y ago
vbezhenar 11y ago
Why do you think that they won't intercept HTTPS traffic? They will just instruct user to install their root certificate. It must be illegal for them to interfere with traffic, no matter what this traffic is. Otherwise there's nothing that would stop them.
- dietrichepp 11y ago
  They'll never ask users to install a root certificate or I'll eat my hat. * It will incur a lot of wrath because it gives them power over your bank account * Only gullible / ignorant users will actually install the certificate * If your internet access is working, why would you go through extra steps?
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Gullible / ignorant covers about 99.3% of the Internet population.
    - sleepychu 11y ago
      Source for that statistic?
      - pille 11y ago
        You might want to try getting out of the HN/SV bubble more often.
      - cpfohl 11y ago
        85.7% of statistics are made up on the spot. 97.1% of people know that! </sarcasm> I don't think this note was intended to be taken literally.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        Good point. I did make it up. Let's take something like using the (now removed) + operator in Google search. http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/search-using-your-terms-verbatim.html http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/search-using-your... > However, we found that users typed the “+” operator in less than half a percent of all searches, and two thirds of the time, it was used incorrectly. 1 in 600 searches used it correctly, another 2 in 600 used it incorrectly. Stuff like that. Or have a look through /r/tipofmytongue for people looking for help to identify songs, tv shows, and films. You'd think they'd include details of roughly when they saw the film, or who any of the actors were (or even what other film they'd been in), and then the plot (with some details), or the name of some of the characters, any music, the genre of movie. But you frequently see people who give very vague information. I won't give examples, but it's really easy to find them. But I do need to remember not to be a judgemental dick about it, and if I was I apologise.

userbinator 11y ago

HTTPS is good and all, but the real problem is ISPs which don't want to be nothing but a transport provider. Every IP packet I send into their network should end up at its destination, with best effort, completely unmodified, and vice-versa. That said, in my experience datacenter and enterprise ISPs tend to be far more "pure", so if you want a truly unmolested connection a possible solution could be to use a VPN to a server that terminates in one of those.

Laforet 11y ago
A lot of ISPs are anything but, including business or datacenter connections. I had to deal with one of them using transparent DNS proxies without disclosing the fact. Only found out when something broken on their end. The only way to have functional DNS is to tunnel it over another protocol because their equipment will intercept DNS queries to any server and reply with a bogus IP.
paulojreis 11y ago
> but the real problem is ISPs which don't want to be nothing but a transport provider. This is very, very true. Anyone who has worked at a telco should've heard the "we don't want to be a dumb pipe" argument. The thing is: they can't be more than that! I don't want their applications, they are not very good at doing applications. I don't want their content, they don't seem to get content production at all. Even their research, it has become less and less relevant. As a customer, I'd rather see all that money spent on efficient ways of transporting bytes, or even directly subsidizing the customer bill (so that they can support smaller ARPUs). But no; I have to pay extra to support the entertainment of their engineers, in order to get sub-optimal apps and content.
- pjc50 11y ago
  It's the other way round: the extra stuff is there as "market differentiation" in order to justify the high prices and prevent commoditisation. The problem is that if you're selling a commodity the price ends up close to the marginal cost of production. Whereas every company wants to have some unique IP they can charge monopoly rent prices for, like Apple. Same with vendor crapware on phones and PCs. I call this stuff "value subtracted software".
- charlesdm 11y ago
  That's exactly the point. The reason they don't want to be a dumb pipe, is because they want to use that to justify increasing their ARPU.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  Don't ISPs give up common-carrier protections for things like copyright when they interfere with the traffic? This should make them liable for contributory infringement on any copyright infringements by their customers that they don't take action against.
  - tajen 11y ago
    I like your thinking. So including ads/warnings/popups is effectively making a derivative work on material that Comcast doesn't own. They become liable for copyright infringement.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Frankly the whole "don't want to be dumb pipe" thing is a telco variant of "perpetual growth". Frankly at one point or other every large company in every mature market has to contend with having reached their growth limit. There are only so many customers in this world for the products and services offered. The only place that could grow forever is Wall Street, by piling derivatives upon derivatives and passing them round like hot potatoes. Everywhere else has to contend with us being on a physically finite planet.
  - malka 11y ago

vbezhenar 11y ago

Why do you think that they won't intercept HTTPS traffic? They will just instruct user to install their root certificate. It must be illegal for them to interfere with traffic, no matter what this traffic is. Otherwise there's nothing that would stop them.

dietrichepp 11y ago
They'll never ask users to install a root certificate or I'll eat my hat. * It will incur a lot of wrath because it gives them power over your bank account * Only gullible / ignorant users will actually install the certificate * If your internet access is working, why would you go through extra steps?
- DanBC 11y ago
  Gullible / ignorant covers about 99.3% of the Internet population.
  - sleepychu 11y ago
    Source for that statistic?
    - pille 11y ago
      You might want to try getting out of the HN/SV bubble more often.
    - cpfohl 11y ago
      85.7% of statistics are made up on the spot. 97.1% of people know that! </sarcasm> I don't think this note was intended to be taken literally.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      Good point. I did make it up. Let's take something like using the (now removed) + operator in Google search. http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/search-using-your-terms-verbatim.html http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/search-using-your... > However, we found that users typed the “+” operator in less than half a percent of all searches, and two thirds of the time, it was used incorrectly. 1 in 600 searches used it correctly, another 2 in 600 used it incorrectly. Stuff like that. Or have a look through /r/tipofmytongue for people looking for help to identify songs, tv shows, and films. You'd think they'd include details of roughly when they saw the film, or who any of the actors were (or even what other film they'd been in), and then the plot (with some details), or the name of some of the characters, any music, the genre of movie. But you frequently see people who give very vague information. I won't give examples, but it's really easy to find them. But I do need to remember not to be a judgemental dick about it, and if I was I apologise.