Charter Communications is sending letters to its customers informing them of an "enhanced online experience" that involves Charter monitoring its users' searches and the websites they visit, and inserting targeted third-party ads based on their web activity. Charter, which serves nearly six million customers, is requiring users who want to keep their activity private to submit their personal information to Charter via an unencrypted form and download a privacy cookie that must be downloaded again each time a user clears his web cache or uses a different browser.
Reader Matt copied us on a letter he sent to Charter's VP of Customer Operations and CEO.
Matt's letter focuses on the flawed opt-out clause, but the program itself, an implementation of "deep packet inspection," is more worrying to us. Deep packet inspection allows an ISP to monitor not only its users searches and visited websites, but also the type of activity (e.g., email or peer-to-peer), which could be used for traffic shaping and threatens net neutrality.
View: Full Article @ The Consumerist
Reader Matt copied us on a letter he sent to Charter's VP of Customer Operations and CEO.
Matt's letter focuses on the flawed opt-out clause, but the program itself, an implementation of "deep packet inspection," is more worrying to us. Deep packet inspection allows an ISP to monitor not only its users searches and visited websites, but also the type of activity (e.g., email or peer-to-peer), which could be used for traffic shaping and threatens net neutrality.
View: Full Article @ The Consumerist
The message to all their customers is to dump them ASAP and find a company that is not about to go out of business and leave them in the lurch.
Farging Bastages!!!!!!
Farging Bastages!!!!!!
mb/s (ie megaBITS, not megaBYTES).
But yeah.. I'm on verizon dsl already, because last time I was on charter it was constantly down. Lesser of two evils :|
They don't use contracts. Just call, listen to them beg you to stay (with offers and discounts), and cancel.
I think they have you by the short hairs.
The "anonymizers" are to spoof the end destination, not the one directly providing your connection!
I think they have you by the short hairs.
The "anonymizers" are to spoof the end destination, not the one directly providing your connection!
Charter does allow the use of your very own cable modem. You aren't required to use one they provide. Just thought I'd throw that out there.
Someone apparently needs to look up "enhanced" in the dictionary.
Now I'm wondering....is there a faster way to lose your customers?
Earthlink, Time Warner/Brighthouse, Capt Dave's Fast Internet Access Company....
I mean it should be easy to abandon ship, right?
Still, for what it is worth, I would advise individuals to stay away from Charter as well. Their support leaves a lot to be desired.
In my region, we had outages every other week. Finally, the bandwidth was limited. When I did have their service a few years back and had a 3mb connection, I usually only got about 1/3 of the potential.
looks like I'm without big brother for the moment
Sure I might can complain their e-mail is down at what seems to be the most critical time, but don't use their service/Outlook much at all. Never have liked the lack of decent, up to date info on their webiste too, but don't go there anyway.
This bit of suspicious activity kind of has me by the hairs though!
I can get Verizon DSL here, but last I knew, they were offereing 3/768, I think was the upload, but when I tried them, I was only getting 1.5/256. That has been a while ago, so i don't know if it's any better yet.
In any case opt out is ridiculous as you need to repeatedly opt out if you clear a cache or use a different browser. This is enforced ad pushing which should be considered equivalent to being forced to receive spam.
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