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I am on a 200GB capped residential LTE internet connection. Upload is included in that data cap. If this was surreptitiously deployed that would cost me money a
by consumer451 4y ago
I am on a 200GB capped residential LTE internet connection. Upload is included in that data cap. If this was surreptitiously deployed that would cost me money and generally be not cool.
- nashashmi 4y agoSeems like the browser should warn of a webRTC connection coming from the site.
- lxgr 4y agoAs far as I know, Safari is doing something along these lines already (I believe WebRTC connections only work there after requesting camera or microphone permissions). An explicit permission would be nicer, possibly ("this site is requesting to establish direct connections" or similar).
- dzhiurgis 4y agoSounds like a job for an adblocker
- nashashmi 4y agoIs it? An adblocker blocks content. Controlling invasive technologies like camera use or file browsing cannot be realistically achieved by an adblocker.
- speedgoose 4y agoThankfully internet innovation doesn’t stop because a few people have terrible internet service providers.
- woah 4y agoWhile there are definitely some terrible ISPs out there, not every instance of someone not being able to use as much bandwidth as they want is a great injustice. Sometimes it’s just sane network management. LTE networks in particular are limited in capacity. There are a bunch of different ways to limit use with different tradeoffs, and bandwidth caps actually strike a good balance between effectiveness and predictability. I have a lot of experience thinking about and implementing bandwidth pricing models, and I don’t have time to list all the options and their tradeoffs here, but you can suggest one you think is better if you want. Bandwidth caps cause users to limit their use, while still allowing a user to use the network heavily without penalty when they need to. The real problem here is that OP doesn’t have an intuitive UX for limiting upload bandwidth to something he is comfortable with. Webtorrent then breaks his assumption that web browsing will not incur upload bandwidth.
- alexb_ 4y agoThis isn't even really a "terrible internet provider" problem - this stuff is getting way way more common across all of America.
- brokenmachine 4y agoSo, terrible internet providers are way more common across all of America?
- bityard 4y agoTerrible internet providers are absolutely the norm across all of America. Except for a handful of small regional ISPs and municipal ISPs, where they haven't been outlawed.
- karaterobot 4y agoIt is in general dishonest to diminish someone else's resources without their consent or prior knowledge. I can see how this is different from using someone else's computer as part of your botnet (because the act itself is illegal), but how is this different from, say, mining a bitcoin on someone else's computer because they visited your website? By "this" I mean the case in which a visitor's bandwidth is used to redistribute a file without their permission.
- autoexec 4y agoThe solution to this is the same as it is for the crypto miners. Disable javascript and WebRTC by default and you no longer have to worry about every website you visit using your computer for whatever they want. New tech is really nice and all, but I've never been a big fan of letting everyone and anyone run whatever code they want on my systems. If I actually need a website to do something like this I'll whitelist it or even set up a browser dedicated to that task, but at this point letting every website do whatever it wants is just dangerous.
- lxgr 4y agoSo let's throw the people under the bus that are only served by a single ISP (or multiple, equally bad options)?
- worldofmatthew 4y agoThat is a you problem. The website is not responsible for your data plan.
- lxgr 4y agoThat attitude is totally fine if you don't care about having people visit your site more than once.
- worldofmatthew 4y agoMost people will view the content they like.
- lxgr 4y agoHave you ever used a limited data plan yourself or talked to someone who does about their web and app use patterns? People get attuned to which sites are wasting their data very quickly.
- bityard 4y agoI hope browsers will implement protections against this sort of thing the same way they currently do against crypto-jacking.