ISP Is Bypassing Firefox's Location Bar Search 385
It was only a matter of time before ISPs began doing more than just redirecting failed DNS requests to their own pages.
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like the largest ISP in Hong Kong has started bypassing search results from Firefox's location bar (which typically uses Google), forcing their own search provider (yp.com.hk) onto their users. ... Can an ISP just start re-directing search traffic at will?"
Sure they can (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Sure they can (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks like the largest ISP in Hong Kong
I never knew that Hong Kong was in the United States.
VPN (Score:3, Insightful)
Use a VPN provider of your choice.
time for end to end encryption (Score:3, Insightful)
Encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's why we should start using encryption for everything...
Re:VPN (Score:2, Insightful)
Use a VPN provider of your choice.
And immediately get throttled by the ISP for using encryption
Not much evidence yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sure they can (Score:5, Insightful)
As shown by the recent Comcast - FCC ruling, ISPs can barely be regulated at all (and therefore can do anything they want).
Well, as someone else pointed out, this is an ISP in Honk Kong, not the US. While most of the "harmonizing" efforts of the Chinese government have been passive toward the consumer of the "non-harmonious" content, I would fear that this is a sort of precursor towards ISPs in China being required to pass search terms linked to individuals/accounts/addresses to the government for non-harmonious search terms indicating a level of dissent associated with that individual. Call me a tin foil hat but I haven't been too impressed with what's going on out in China. While you might claim it's overhead and too expensive, I guess we might start talking about https (port 443 secure) traffic even for search terms to avoid this inspection? Even that's naive though as the government could just ask the inside search provider for the data ... or failing that block the that port on that provider.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
They can if they're in China (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Who knows? They have been quite responsive to complaints about services in the past. Even if I don't get an immediate response my voice was heard. They do know at least one of their customers was angry about their conduct. Should I just silently accept them screwing with me and not voice my concerns? That seems to me a guarantee that they won't change their ways.
From your post it seems that you think not standing up for yourself is the way to change things. Don't vote. Don't express your opinion. Be a martyr. How's that working for you? Effecting a lot of change in society are you?
Re:MitM of Google (Score:1, Insightful)
It's www.google.com. That's why OpenDNS forges DNS responses for that domain name to redirect to an OpenDNS server. I am really looking forward to DNSSec and SSL keys in the DNS. If the ISPs can't keep themselves from meddling with the traffic, the traffic needs to be authenticated and encrypted to foil their attempts.
This is why we need net neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really believe the average firefox user has the technical know-how to even understand what a DNS server is, let alone how to setup and configure one, even if it is "trivially easy" for you? Please...
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also very easy for your ISP to intercept all DNS queries, regardless of where they're being sent, and handle them themselves. I know of an ISP that does this.
It would, of course, be possible to run an encrypted tunnel to a remote machine with a caching DNS server on it, then direct all your queries to that. I suspect this is far beyond the ken of most normal users. Just setting up a caching name server is beyond the ken of normal users. Most of them can handle turning computers on and click icons. Some of them have problems with that.
Re:Encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that encryption won't help without authentication; your ISP will just MITM all your encrypted traffic. You need to know who you're really talking to.
Re:Making their own argument for net neutrality... (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed! Adam Smith's laissez faire was based on thousands of small, independent businesses --not a few monopolies. Perhaps that is why in Europe people are not bothered by the idea of government intrusion in controlling their lives, but rather big business intrusion and controlling their lives.
Re:Nope (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're paying for a service that requires using someone's else property, they have voluntarily transferred some of their interest and rights in that property to you. Your landlord can't come into the house you're renting from him just because he feels like it, even if a clause permitting it is in the lease agreement. In the same way, if an ISP sells you access to the Internet, they can't start blocking you from certain parts of it without changing the agreement, which requires your consent (after all, it's a contract, and contracts require all parties to agree to it).
Whether the courts would agree with this interpretation is another matter, but this is the way I see it.
Re:My ISP has been doing this for some time now (Score:2, Insightful)
use a different DNS server
Re:In China? (Score:3, Insightful)
This can be solved simply (Score:3, Insightful)
All Google needs to do is modify their search bar to encrypt the outbound search string using Google's public key. By doing that, it makes it difficult to intercept whatever search is being done.
Re:Sure they can (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sure they can (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure they can, and by the federal government, too. Congress just hasn't yet given the FCC that power.
So in general they could be regulated, but in practice not yet.
Re:China? (Score:4, Insightful)
The usual argument is that an ISP isn't legally liable for the information that they carry (as long as they comply with some basic rules), because their whole business model is based on them being a dumb carrier. They don't edit, they can't edit, it's not their job to edit, and if they tried, they'd be failing their customers and be wrecked as a business. If someone emails a piece of child porn across their network, they aren't guilty of aiding and abetting, because it's not their job to read or alter content.
So if an ISP has decided that it might be able to make a bit of extra money by deciding to divert search requests and exercise editorial control over what their customers are able to access, then ... bad news ... they've just broken that principle, stopped being a simple carrier and started to be an edited service. And with editorial power comes editorial responsibility. And that means that if someone goes on a killing spree and their family decides that they were influenced by content they found on the net, then if the person's ISP felt entitled to edit out Google, but not to edit out gun retailer sites or extremist political sites, the family's lawyer can now try to sue that ISP, on the grounds that the ISP has already discarded the principle that it doesn't filter content.
Any time an ISP pulls a redirection stunt like this, don't complain to their technicians: write a polite little note to their board of directors, or to their technical director, asking whether the shareholders understand that they're risking operating a corporation without legal "pure carrier status" protection. This is potentially a "shareholder alert" situation. Does the company's prospectus inform shareholders that the company is operating outside the usual "dumb carrier" rules?
If they're making extra money on the side by stealing Google business, by "diverting the flow", ask them if their legal department has estimated how much they stand to lose if they get sued. Not by Google, but by the mother of some kid that got murdered after meeting someone they shouldn't from an internet chatroom.
Simple "carrier" ISP's don't edit for a reason. By deliberately firewalling themselves off from editorial powers, they give themselves a degree of immunity from being liable for what they carry. That's not something you throw away lightly. And if I was the CEO of another ISP, I'd be wanting to ring the CEO of this ISP, and ask them what they hell they thought they were doing, and whether they were trying to bring down the entire industry.
Re:Sure they can (Score:4, Insightful)
You're largely correct.
They shift their stance based on what they're asking for. Just 2 weeks ago, AT&T defended the FCC(in a case against Comcast) because it feared losing universal service fee money because of the "telecommunications carriers" classification. I don't pretend to be an expert...
but it seems fairly obvious that when there is tax dollars to be handed out to build infrastructure, the telecoms are all out there with their hands open ready and willing. But when it comes time for the FCC to enforce consumer fairness and openness on the internet(that we taxpayers paid AT&T and others to build a backbone for), they cry foul.
Politicians seem spineless when it comes time to intervene.
Re:Sure they can (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, it's a wonder there's any life at all on North America. No wonder you invented nuclear weapons; anything less doesn't even register against the hellish conditions of that purgatory-like continent you live on.