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AT&T’s GigaPower plans turn privacy into a luxury that few would choose

213 points by TwoFactor 12y ago

rayiner 12y ago
I don't like this whole trend of collecting user data, but at least AT&T offers a way to pay extra to opt-out of targeted advertising, unlike, well, nearly ever other entity on the internet. I'd happily pay $62/month for spyware-free Facebook.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  That's BS. First off, AT&T already has a business model! And they're making billions from it, too. It's like Facebook charging you $50 a month, then starting to collect all of your data, too, and then saying "if you want us to stop doing it, then you'd better give us an extra $50 a month". > I'd happily pay $62/month for spyware-free Facebook. You'd pay $744 per year to use Facebook? You don't say.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    My airline charges me for the flight, then prints out an ad on the boarding pass. I wasn't aware that businesses had to pick one way of monetizing users. I don't like that this has become the way the internet is bankrolled, but all my data is being snooped the minute it leaves AT&T's network, so what do I really care if AT&T gets in the game too? > And they're making billions from it, too. I don't find this argument wildly compelling in light of Facebook's 25% profit margin, versus AT&T's 11% margin. > You'd pay $744 per year to use Facebook? You don't say. As a 30-something with a kid, I have to admit my primary use of Facebook is sharing pictures of my daughter and my friends' kids. But Facebook benefits from powerful network effects. It's the only site my parents, my wife's parents, and my family in Bangladesh regularly check, and they demand regular baby updates. As a practical matter, I have more ISP choices than social-networking choices.
    - judk 12y ago
      "Profit margin" does not mean what you seem to think it means. Check your units.
      - rayiner 12y ago
        Profit margin is very important in this context, because it's indicative of how much of the money you pay as a customer turns into profit in some shareholder's pocket. If you're using profits as justification for the claim that some company is gouging you, profit margin is a much more relevant metric than total profits. HP is much more profitable than Facebook, but I don't think anyone would argue that they're gouging customers. They sell products at razor-thin margins in an insanely competitive market.
  - whoismua 12y ago
    That's BS. First off, AT&T already has a business model! And they're making billions from it, too. Google already "snoops" on you, FB snoops on you, so why not AT&T for a discount? Google and FB offer "free" services as long as they snoop on everything you do, AT&T offers a discount. Capitalism at its best. Don't like the cheaper snooping offer? Pay more. Or don't choose AT&T. The average users stands no chance of avoiding Google between the search, Youtube, Analytics, Adsense, Doubleclick, Android etc etc...More or less, 100% of sites have one of those installed. So why shouldn't AT&T make you an offer too? Take it or leave it. Surely Google would still be wildly profitable if they tracked you 30% less and /or if they showed less ads.
- chiph 12y ago
  Paying someone extra to not do something you don't like is commonly called paying protection money.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    No, protection money is when someone threatens to do something illegal. This is offering a discount in return for viewing targeted ads, which is something, e.g. Amazon does with their Kindle, among many other companies.
    - betterunix 12y ago
      This is not offering you a discount in return for your viewing targeted ads, because nothing here actually requires you to view ads in the first place. This is more like saying, "Pay us more and we won't sell your browsing history to whatever company offers us money."
  - xhrpost 12y ago
    Sounds similar to having to pay the phone company to NOT put your phone number in the phone book. I once heard it described as "Corporate Blackmail".
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > Sounds similar to having to pay the phone company to NOT put your phone number in the phone book. Shocking how something coming from AT&T seems a lot like well-established, if unwelcome, practice of "the phone company".
- equalarrow 12y ago
  I'd say it's pretty naive to think that they won't store the data and sell it at some point anyway. Why wouldn't they? There are little, if any, legal ramifications for them. By paying extra for 'privacy', you're just encouraging the bad behavior to begin with. Talk about social engineering..
frozenport 12y ago
How can AT&T target ads, if they don't run ads? Are going to be intercepting our pages and feeding their crap into my HTML?
- chiph 12y ago
  Yes. There have been cases where ISPs were caught injecting/replacing ads in the HTML stream.
  - PeterisP 12y ago
    That mandates a switch to https everywhere. Our common network software should be designed with the expectation that the middlemen (including your ISP) are actively hostile, and include defenses against their attacks. Making the html stream inaccessible to them is a first step in that direction.
    - vertex-four 12y ago
      Switching to HTTPS everywhere means that we have to drop the traditional CA model; certificates from CAs are just too expensive. (Replacements are either DANE, which depends on DNSSEC, or Namecoin, which replaces the DNS system entirely and has many problems of its own.) Expect all this to be fought tooth and nail.
      - stephen_g 12y ago
        What is this, 2005? StartSSL offer free SSL certificates that are trusted by all browsers. If that's too cheap, you can get a Comodo certificate through Namecheap for $10 a year... If you can afford a domain, you can afford an SSL certificate...
        vertex-four 12y ago
        Have you not been paying attention to the Heartbleed thing? StartSSL is a scummy company that breaks the rules they've agreed to with browser vendors. I would not trust them if I had a choice in the matter. I have a bunch of domains which, frankly, I don't care enough about to pay money for an SSL certificate for.
kenthorvath 12y ago
Or you could pay an additional $5/month for a decent VPN. In fact, I have a number of close contacts who work in the industry who tell me that this type of practice is of heavy interest and routine on the wireless end of things. Companies are tracking not just your browsing habits but your location data based on cell tower triangulation. This is why we need to decentralize the ISPs and move to local mesh networks.
- r1ch 12y ago
  You'd probably end up paying a lot more than $5/mo for a VPN that is actually able to keep up with gigabit internet speeds and downloading habits.
  - Fuxy 12y ago
    You know your ISP is crap when you have to pay another ISP(VPN) to keep your connection secure and private.
    - kenthorvath 12y ago
      Yes. We can generally all agree that ISPs in the United States are effectively monopolists with no incentive to do what's right for their customers. Now, let's talk solutions.
      - logfromblammo 12y ago
        Everyone run some fiber to your nearest neighbor in each of the 4 cardinal directions. Go to MIT, find one or more of the kids that already figured out to make all that work, and read their theses. Launch an open-source project for the required network hardware and its firmware, and manage to sell as many as you can produce at $30 each. My pipe dreams are about a series of tubes.
        wmf 12y ago
        A five-port gigabit fiber router sounds more like $300 in volume, and most Americans would rather pay $299/month than $300 one time because it's cheaper.
gfisher 12y ago
As a recent Austin subscriber to AT&Ts GigaPower, I opted to let them snoop on my traffic for the discount. I really didn't see the difference in what they were doing versus Google or any other search engine. That, along with the significant price reduction ($320/mo versus $140/mo - they didn't let me bundle any services without the deal) led me to allow this. As another poster mentioned - if I get really paranoid, I will eventually set up a VPN, and tunnel all of my traffic through that. I did want to add that once Google Fiber comes to my neighborhood, I will be jumping ship though. We have had two significant outages in the first month of GigaPower.
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  I agree, they are supposedly only using that data for targeted ads which can easily be defeated by a using abp or a hosts file.
- judk 12y ago
  Google works a lot harder to protect your data and not download a copy to every government office, unlike AT&T
- Tepix 12y ago
  The most obvious difference is that they get to see all your traffic, not just those websites which integrate google analytics (which can be a sizeable chunk). If your smartphone also uses AT&T they see that traffic also. The only place where you are hidden from them is at work.
  - gfisher 12y ago
    >The only place where you are hidden from them is at work. Of course, at work we have Gigapower as well.
coldcode 12y ago
So unless you win the Google lottery you have a choice between having AT&T watching your every packet or Comcast's Standard "Oil" Cable monopoly in progress. No Google for me so it's essentially a Hobson's choice for me.
- adestefan 12y ago
  I don't know why people think Google will be any better. Sure, now they're all about unicorns and rainbows, and talking the good game to get into what is a very capital heavy market. I can easily see Google switching to this exact same model to inject Adwords and extract even more money from subscribers once they're hooked. The difference is Google won't let you opt out.
  - ds9 12y ago
    I'm not even clear on whether ATT lets subscribers opt out. Does the offer say you can opt out of the wiretapping or that you can opt out of only the targeted ads? If you care about privacy, the DPI is the enemy, and the ad-targeting is irrelevant (you already have the ability to not retrieve ads, just blacklist the ad servers). But if what ATT offers for the higher price is only to not target ads, they'll trick most people into thinking they still have privacy, while the DPI is applied to everyone. It's the difference between tracking only by server/client tricks (IP, cookies, hit logs etc.) vs. tracking by the ISP. The former can be avoided by client config, the latter only with a VPN. Even if they let you supposedly opt out of the DPI, who trusts a corporation like this? And as adestefan notes, where do people get the assumption that Google is not doing the same? Edit: I finally found ATT's (semi-) disclosure about this: http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB421828&cv=812 http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB421828&cv=812 It says that if you don't opt out they collect " webpages you visit, the time you spend on each, the links or ads you see and follow, and the search terms you enter" - but there is no statement that they're not collecting that info if you opt out. All they promise for opting out is not targeting ads with that data.
  - AUmrysh 12y ago
    Yeah, but you'd pay about the same price for gigabit ethernet from a company that isn't trying to kill net neutrality. I'd much rather google spy on my web browsing (they probably do with chrome anyway), than Comcast.
PeterisP 12y ago
The prices seem insane - are they representative of the US broadband market? I'm currently paying 15 EUR/mth for a 100mbit service, more bandwidth would be more expensive, but not extremely so.
- xhrpost 12y ago
  No, they're much cheaper. I pay $50/mo for 18Mbps. The more rural you are, the worse it gets. I know people paying $35/mo for 2Mbps.
  - fredgrott 12y ago
    hmm I use a combo TMobile broadband at 45Mbps and library wifi at 2Mbps..USA is getting better at least fixed wireless is finally taking off
  - trebor 12y ago
    I live in a "rural" place on one of the nation's fiber backbones, one of the top in the country due to nearby military/government facilities, and we don't even get the full 7Mbps bandwidth we pay for. And that's still $30-40/mo. And all that is because Verizon won't upgrade their equipment to handle the congestion that happens at night. It's not that they can't, but that we're "rural".
    - Sxw1212 12y ago
      I live on a farm in Texas. We pay $100/mo for 5mbps internet and rarely get one. (Our landline is bundled with it) Our whole internet has gone down for days multiple times.
  - chimeracoder 12y ago
    I live in the least rural place in the country (midtown Manhattan), and that's about what I'm paying (technically it's $60 for 20 Mbps advertised[0]). [0] Which usually gets me about 1 MB/s in practice.
  - freejack 12y ago
xhrpost 12y ago
Even if we had a more competitive market, what could really be done about this? It seems people tend to flock towards lower price, particularly when the difference is something that's not immediately tangible. I worked retail years ago and I know that people would sometimes come in, get help from our staff, and then go to Walmart to buy the same printer a few bucks cheaper. In the end, the incentive is for the retail outlets to have as little service as possible.
- wmf 12y ago
  Is AT&T really making $30/month from people's browsing histories? I suspect that data is worth dramatically less, so in a competitive market the premium for not being spied on ought to drop.
  - xhrpost 12y ago
    I have my doubts on that figure as well, but if it's worth a lot less, why give the customer such a discount?
    - arjie 12y ago
      It may not be a discount. The higher fee is to discourage the more expensive service. We're assuming that the baseline cost is the lower one, but what if it isn't?
  - natdempk 12y ago
    I think its better to look at this another way: that they are making $30/month from the privacy concerned and that the higher price would not hold as their only price if they got rid of the "privacy plan". $150/month seems comparable to what other companies charge for similar services, while $180/month for that same service seems high. To me this feels like a trick to get most users to opt in by artificially increasing the price of their "standard" plan.
  - sixothree 12y ago
    It's not anonymized, is it?
ticktocktick 12y ago
Now we know why common carrier will never happen.
jamieb 12y ago
Will they start doing that to my phone line too? Selling my call history to third parties?
- mcherm 12y ago
  No, there are laws preventing it.
  - coherentpony 12y ago
    There are also laws preventing unreasonable search and seizure, but it still happens.
- mbreese 12y ago
  Don't they do that already? Except they call them "partners" and it's "anonymized". At least for wireless users they already do. It's only a matter of time before they do the same with land-line users. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323463704578497153556847658?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887323463704578497153556847658.html http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732346370... http://www.attpublicpolicy.com/privacy/our-updated-privacy-policy-2/ http://www.attpublicpolicy.com/privacy/our-updated-privacy-p...
  - ehPReth 12y ago
    My cellular provider monitors data traffic to sell off to advertisers. Everyone is opted in by default - no price increase for opting out though
njharman 12y ago
I'm sure most corporations suck (it's inherent in their size, structure and purpose). But I know AT&T sucks. I've loathed them, ever since their backing of the Clipper Chip. I'm currently using tethered wifi cellphone as my only home internet because I refuse to give money to either of my only two broadband options, AT&T or Time Warner.
DanBC 12y ago
I am a bit confused by this. What do people think the ISP does with the packets? Who thinks that their browsing habits are hidden from the ISP (without using a VPN)? So is this just an expensive opt out of targetted ads, or is it actually providing extra privacy features?
- natdempk 12y ago
  I'm guessing this is just giving them a legal justification to do whatever they want with your data and making that the new standard agreement at the same time, by providing a false benefit to the consumer. They also get to make extra money off the people who prefer privacy in this setup.
- antsar 12y ago
  It is an expensive opt out of targeted ads. AT&T refers to the ad targeting as "Internet Preferences": http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB421828&cv=812&_requestid=290890 http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB421828&cv=812&... Sounds like they gather your full browsing history, and then assist 3rd-party ad networks in targeting their ads at you. Or, worse yet, just hand over your browsing history for ad networks to process. Their marketing materials don't seem to make this clear.
- rayiner 12y ago
  > Who thinks that their browsing habits are hidden from the ISP (without using a VPN)? Who thinks their browsing habits are hidden from anybody? The internet is a packet-switched routed network that sends almost everything in clear text. Anybody who receives or forwards a packet can mine it for data.
- gscott 12y ago
  I agree... AT&T never says they will not inspect the packets nor keep the Government from inspecting the packets. They just give a lower priced option where they target you with ads/or sell your browsing history, etc. NSA is splitting off the packets 100% at the major uplinks regardless of what AT&T or any other provider does.
morgante 12y ago
To be honest, I'm not so concerned about them looking at my packets. Well, more specifically, I take it as a given of the modern web that any data which people can mine they will mine. What is more concerning is how AT&T actually serves those targeted ads. Are they injecting ads into pages and modifying HTML? That seems like an incredibly disastrous procedure which would hopefully get them into trouble with content providers and even the FCC. I surely hope that's not the case.
- bredman 12y ago
  In the article there's a screenshot that strongly implies the ads will be coming via email ("this consent supersedes any prior email unsubscribe notification I may have with AT&T")
  - jdubs 12y ago
    I have never received an email from att, though they may getting caught in gmail's spam filter. I have also been unable to discern ATT's gigapower ads from other ads.
    - esbranson 12y ago
      So are you saying that you lack the ability to discern AT&T's GigaPower ads from other ads, or are you saying that AT&T's ads are indiscernible from other ads?
- downandout 12y ago
  More likely than not, they are talking about selling your browsing history to major ad networks that already have ads embedded on the sites you use rather than injecting their own ads into others' content. I assume this to be the primary difference between the "snooping" and "non-snooping" plans, because many ISP's already internally keep some amount of browsing history but don't sell it to third parties. If they are doing ad injection, it is unclear whether or not they could be successfully sued. Some browser plugins with very large user bases inject/modify ads, and although some have received cease and desist letters from content providers, and some have been sued and settled out of court before trial, I don't believe any have gone to trial and lost. The law is murky at best on that issue, and as the ISP, odds are that AT&T would be in a far stronger legal position than even the browser plugins that have been doing this for years.
api 12y ago
Google might be doing the same thing to everyone with Google Fiber. The solution is to encrypt everything. Smother this business model in the crib by making packet inspection worthless.
eyeareque 12y ago
If they've been giving a copy of our packets to the NSA for years, this isn't really that big of a deal with all things considered. Personally, I would never use AT&T for broadband at home again. I'll always go with their competitor and I wish other people would do the same. Their motto should be: monopolize and do evil whenever possible.
- pktgen 12y ago
  Except said "competitor" is most likely Comcast who is no different.
  - eyeareque 12y ago
    Sadly I'd choose comcast over ATT. Let's hope we have more options than that in the future though.
    - pktgen 12y ago
      Difficult situation. I've already decided I will never move to any location, anywhere, where AT&T, Verizon (even FiOS), or Comcast are my only viable options. I hate all of those companies and will never, ever give them a single penny. Even CenturyLink (my current ISP, who happens to be the only choice here besides Comcast) is starting to piss me off lately, but what the hell am I going to do about it...
justizin 12y ago
"In their defense I should have probably read the fine print" Nope.
hardwaresofton 12y ago
While I'm not a fan of the telecoms, AT&T shouldn't be getting flak for this. Google is snoop-by-default (not holding it against them, they are a company looking for profit just like any other), at the very least, AT&T is making the choice here clear. Fiber's privacy notice: https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html It looks like the same snooping that's in all the other google apps (whether to serve you ads or otherwise). I'm glad that it's out in the open, and hopefully it causes people to think about the value of their privacy (and feel a little bit more paranoid about their lack of it) I'm not sure who said it first, or where I heard it, but the belief that "everything google does is a loss leader for adwords" holds true here -- this is why I believe they're going to snoop-by-default, and not think twice about using your data as it flows through their fiber.
- aeturnum 12y ago
  I agree that it's ok to give users a discount for giving up privacy. The problem, in this case, is how hard to tell: what level of privacy you're giving up, how they'll deliver the ads and that there's "private" option. Google does not have to meet the same standard as they do not have a "private" version (except google apps). If AT&T presented this as $179 + $50 for normal, or $150 + $0 "with special offers" (think kindle model), I think people would be much less worried.
digz 12y ago
Or you can just not subscribe to AT&T. Austin's a great example of a place where customers have choice. Cable provider(s?)/AT&T/DSL/Google Fiber/LTE/LTE/LTE/LTE.
jmilkbal 12y ago
We're working on municipal fiber optic internet in Omaha and this is fantastic ammunition for a project like ours.
justizin 12y ago
comcast charges netflix for interconnects, not prioritization, and everyone is up in arms, but AT&T performs NSA-style deep packet inspection to fuel ads, unless you pay a ransom, and everyone is basically ok with it. This is why I don't think we're ready to pass net neutrality legislation.
bitwize 12y ago
The endpoints may not be interested in the network, but the network is interested in the endpoints. At least in Murka.

213 points by TwoFactor 12y ago

I don't like this whole trend of collecting user data, but at least AT&T offers a way to pay extra to opt-out of targeted advertising, unlike, well, nearly ever other entity on the internet. I'd happily pay $62/month for spyware-free Facebook.

higherpurpose 12y ago
That's BS. First off, AT&T already has a business model! And they're making billions from it, too. It's like Facebook charging you $50 a month, then starting to collect all of your data, too, and then saying "if you want us to stop doing it, then you'd better give us an extra $50 a month". > I'd happily pay $62/month for spyware-free Facebook. You'd pay $744 per year to use Facebook? You don't say.
- rayiner 12y ago
  My airline charges me for the flight, then prints out an ad on the boarding pass. I wasn't aware that businesses had to pick one way of monetizing users. I don't like that this has become the way the internet is bankrolled, but all my data is being snooped the minute it leaves AT&T's network, so what do I really care if AT&T gets in the game too? > And they're making billions from it, too. I don't find this argument wildly compelling in light of Facebook's 25% profit margin, versus AT&T's 11% margin. > You'd pay $744 per year to use Facebook? You don't say. As a 30-something with a kid, I have to admit my primary use of Facebook is sharing pictures of my daughter and my friends' kids. But Facebook benefits from powerful network effects. It's the only site my parents, my wife's parents, and my family in Bangladesh regularly check, and they demand regular baby updates. As a practical matter, I have more ISP choices than social-networking choices.
  - judk 12y ago
    "Profit margin" does not mean what you seem to think it means. Check your units.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      Profit margin is very important in this context, because it's indicative of how much of the money you pay as a customer turns into profit in some shareholder's pocket. If you're using profits as justification for the claim that some company is gouging you, profit margin is a much more relevant metric than total profits. HP is much more profitable than Facebook, but I don't think anyone would argue that they're gouging customers. They sell products at razor-thin margins in an insanely competitive market.
- whoismua 12y ago
  That's BS. First off, AT&T already has a business model! And they're making billions from it, too. Google already "snoops" on you, FB snoops on you, so why not AT&T for a discount? Google and FB offer "free" services as long as they snoop on everything you do, AT&T offers a discount. Capitalism at its best. Don't like the cheaper snooping offer? Pay more. Or don't choose AT&T. The average users stands no chance of avoiding Google between the search, Youtube, Analytics, Adsense, Doubleclick, Android etc etc...More or less, 100% of sites have one of those installed. So why shouldn't AT&T make you an offer too? Take it or leave it. Surely Google would still be wildly profitable if they tracked you 30% less and /or if they showed less ads.
chiph 12y ago
Paying someone extra to not do something you don't like is commonly called paying protection money.
- rayiner 12y ago
  No, protection money is when someone threatens to do something illegal. This is offering a discount in return for viewing targeted ads, which is something, e.g. Amazon does with their Kindle, among many other companies.
  - betterunix 12y ago
    This is not offering you a discount in return for your viewing targeted ads, because nothing here actually requires you to view ads in the first place. This is more like saying, "Pay us more and we won't sell your browsing history to whatever company offers us money."
- xhrpost 12y ago
  Sounds similar to having to pay the phone company to NOT put your phone number in the phone book. I once heard it described as "Corporate Blackmail".
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Sounds similar to having to pay the phone company to NOT put your phone number in the phone book. Shocking how something coming from AT&T seems a lot like well-established, if unwelcome, practice of "the phone company".
equalarrow 12y ago
I'd say it's pretty naive to think that they won't store the data and sell it at some point anyway. Why wouldn't they? There are little, if any, legal ramifications for them. By paying extra for 'privacy', you're just encouraging the bad behavior to begin with. Talk about social engineering..

frozenport 12y ago

How can AT&T target ads, if they don't run ads? Are going to be intercepting our pages and feeding their crap into my HTML?

chiph 12y ago
Yes. There have been cases where ISPs were caught injecting/replacing ads in the HTML stream.
- PeterisP 12y ago
  That mandates a switch to https everywhere. Our common network software should be designed with the expectation that the middlemen (including your ISP) are actively hostile, and include defenses against their attacks. Making the html stream inaccessible to them is a first step in that direction.
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    Switching to HTTPS everywhere means that we have to drop the traditional CA model; certificates from CAs are just too expensive. (Replacements are either DANE, which depends on DNSSEC, or Namecoin, which replaces the DNS system entirely and has many problems of its own.) Expect all this to be fought tooth and nail.
    - stephen_g 12y ago
      What is this, 2005? StartSSL offer free SSL certificates that are trusted by all browsers. If that's too cheap, you can get a Comodo certificate through Namecheap for $10 a year... If you can afford a domain, you can afford an SSL certificate...
      - vertex-four 12y ago
        Have you not been paying attention to the Heartbleed thing? StartSSL is a scummy company that breaks the rules they've agreed to with browser vendors. I would not trust them if I had a choice in the matter. I have a bunch of domains which, frankly, I don't care enough about to pay money for an SSL certificate for.

kenthorvath 12y ago

Or you could pay an additional $5/month for a decent VPN. In fact, I have a number of close contacts who work in the industry who tell me that this type of practice is of heavy interest and routine on the wireless end of things. Companies are tracking not just your browsing habits but your location data based on cell tower triangulation. This is why we need to decentralize the ISPs and move to local mesh networks.

r1ch 12y ago
You'd probably end up paying a lot more than $5/mo for a VPN that is actually able to keep up with gigabit internet speeds and downloading habits.
- Fuxy 12y ago
  You know your ISP is crap when you have to pay another ISP(VPN) to keep your connection secure and private.
  - kenthorvath 12y ago
    Yes. We can generally all agree that ISPs in the United States are effectively monopolists with no incentive to do what's right for their customers. Now, let's talk solutions.
    - logfromblammo 12y ago
      Everyone run some fiber to your nearest neighbor in each of the 4 cardinal directions. Go to MIT, find one or more of the kids that already figured out to make all that work, and read their theses. Launch an open-source project for the required network hardware and its firmware, and manage to sell as many as you can produce at $30 each. My pipe dreams are about a series of tubes.
      - wmf 12y ago
        A five-port gigabit fiber router sounds more like $300 in volume, and most Americans would rather pay $299/month than $300 one time because it's cheaper.

gfisher 12y ago

As a recent Austin subscriber to AT&Ts GigaPower, I opted to let them snoop on my traffic for the discount. I really didn't see the difference in what they were doing versus Google or any other search engine. That, along with the significant price reduction ($320/mo versus $140/mo - they didn't let me bundle any services without the deal) led me to allow this. As another poster mentioned - if I get really paranoid, I will eventually set up a VPN, and tunnel all of my traffic through that. I did want to add that once Google Fiber comes to my neighborhood, I will be jumping ship though. We have had two significant outages in the first month of GigaPower.

Igglyboo 12y ago
I agree, they are supposedly only using that data for targeted ads which can easily be defeated by a using abp or a hosts file.
judk 12y ago
Google works a lot harder to protect your data and not download a copy to every government office, unlike AT&T
Tepix 12y ago
The most obvious difference is that they get to see all your traffic, not just those websites which integrate google analytics (which can be a sizeable chunk). If your smartphone also uses AT&T they see that traffic also. The only place where you are hidden from them is at work.
- gfisher 12y ago
  >The only place where you are hidden from them is at work. Of course, at work we have Gigapower as well.

coldcode 12y ago

So unless you win the Google lottery you have a choice between having AT&T watching your every packet or Comcast's Standard "Oil" Cable monopoly in progress. No Google for me so it's essentially a Hobson's choice for me.

adestefan 12y ago
I don't know why people think Google will be any better. Sure, now they're all about unicorns and rainbows, and talking the good game to get into what is a very capital heavy market. I can easily see Google switching to this exact same model to inject Adwords and extract even more money from subscribers once they're hooked. The difference is Google won't let you opt out.
- ds9 12y ago
  I'm not even clear on whether ATT lets subscribers opt out. Does the offer say you can opt out of the wiretapping or that you can opt out of only the targeted ads? If you care about privacy, the DPI is the enemy, and the ad-targeting is irrelevant (you already have the ability to not retrieve ads, just blacklist the ad servers). But if what ATT offers for the higher price is only to not target ads, they'll trick most people into thinking they still have privacy, while the DPI is applied to everyone. It's the difference between tracking only by server/client tricks (IP, cookies, hit logs etc.) vs. tracking by the ISP. The former can be avoided by client config, the latter only with a VPN. Even if they let you supposedly opt out of the DPI, who trusts a corporation like this? And as adestefan notes, where do people get the assumption that Google is not doing the same? Edit: I finally found ATT's (semi-) disclosure about this: http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB421828&cv=812 http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB421828&cv=812 It says that if you don't opt out they collect " webpages you visit, the time you spend on each, the links or ads you see and follow, and the search terms you enter" - but there is no statement that they're not collecting that info if you opt out. All they promise for opting out is not targeting ads with that data.
- AUmrysh 12y ago
  Yeah, but you'd pay about the same price for gigabit ethernet from a company that isn't trying to kill net neutrality. I'd much rather google spy on my web browsing (they probably do with chrome anyway), than Comcast.

PeterisP 12y ago

The prices seem insane - are they representative of the US broadband market? I'm currently paying 15 EUR/mth for a 100mbit service, more bandwidth would be more expensive, but not extremely so.

xhrpost 12y ago
No, they're much cheaper. I pay $50/mo for 18Mbps. The more rural you are, the worse it gets. I know people paying $35/mo for 2Mbps.
- fredgrott 12y ago
  hmm I use a combo TMobile broadband at 45Mbps and library wifi at 2Mbps..USA is getting better at least fixed wireless is finally taking off
- trebor 12y ago
  I live in a "rural" place on one of the nation's fiber backbones, one of the top in the country due to nearby military/government facilities, and we don't even get the full 7Mbps bandwidth we pay for. And that's still $30-40/mo. And all that is because Verizon won't upgrade their equipment to handle the congestion that happens at night. It's not that they can't, but that we're "rural".
  - Sxw1212 12y ago
    I live on a farm in Texas. We pay $100/mo for 5mbps internet and rarely get one. (Our landline is bundled with it) Our whole internet has gone down for days multiple times.
- chimeracoder 12y ago
  I live in the least rural place in the country (midtown Manhattan), and that's about what I'm paying (technically it's $60 for 20 Mbps advertised[0]). [0] Which usually gets me about 1 MB/s in practice.
- freejack 12y ago

xhrpost 12y ago

Even if we had a more competitive market, what could really be done about this? It seems people tend to flock towards lower price, particularly when the difference is something that's not immediately tangible. I worked retail years ago and I know that people would sometimes come in, get help from our staff, and then go to Walmart to buy the same printer a few bucks cheaper. In the end, the incentive is for the retail outlets to have as little service as possible.

wmf 12y ago
Is AT&T really making $30/month from people's browsing histories? I suspect that data is worth dramatically less, so in a competitive market the premium for not being spied on ought to drop.
- xhrpost 12y ago
  I have my doubts on that figure as well, but if it's worth a lot less, why give the customer such a discount?
  - arjie 12y ago
    It may not be a discount. The higher fee is to discourage the more expensive service. We're assuming that the baseline cost is the lower one, but what if it isn't?
- natdempk 12y ago
  I think its better to look at this another way: that they are making $30/month from the privacy concerned and that the higher price would not hold as their only price if they got rid of the "privacy plan". $150/month seems comparable to what other companies charge for similar services, while $180/month for that same service seems high. To me this feels like a trick to get most users to opt in by artificially increasing the price of their "standard" plan.
- sixothree 12y ago
  It's not anonymized, is it?

ticktocktick 12y ago

Now we know why common carrier will never happen.

jamieb 12y ago

Will they start doing that to my phone line too? Selling my call history to third parties?

mcherm 12y ago
No, there are laws preventing it.
- coherentpony 12y ago
  There are also laws preventing unreasonable search and seizure, but it still happens.
mbreese 12y ago
Don't they do that already? Except they call them "partners" and it's "anonymized". At least for wireless users they already do. It's only a matter of time before they do the same with land-line users. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323463704578497153556847658?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887323463704578497153556847658.html http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732346370... http://www.attpublicpolicy.com/privacy/our-updated-privacy-policy-2/ http://www.attpublicpolicy.com/privacy/our-updated-privacy-p...
- ehPReth 12y ago
  My cellular provider monitors data traffic to sell off to advertisers. Everyone is opted in by default - no price increase for opting out though

njharman 12y ago

I'm sure most corporations suck (it's inherent in their size, structure and purpose). But I know AT&T sucks. I've loathed them, ever since their backing of the Clipper Chip. I'm currently using tethered wifi cellphone as my only home internet because I refuse to give money to either of my only two broadband options, AT&T or Time Warner.

DanBC 12y ago

I am a bit confused by this. What do people think the ISP does with the packets? Who thinks that their browsing habits are hidden from the ISP (without using a VPN)? So is this just an expensive opt out of targetted ads, or is it actually providing extra privacy features?

natdempk 12y ago
I'm guessing this is just giving them a legal justification to do whatever they want with your data and making that the new standard agreement at the same time, by providing a false benefit to the consumer. They also get to make extra money off the people who prefer privacy in this setup.
antsar 12y ago
It is an expensive opt out of targeted ads. AT&T refers to the ad targeting as "Internet Preferences": http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB421828&cv=812&_requestid=290890 http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB421828&cv=812&... Sounds like they gather your full browsing history, and then assist 3rd-party ad networks in targeting their ads at you. Or, worse yet, just hand over your browsing history for ad networks to process. Their marketing materials don't seem to make this clear.
rayiner 12y ago
> Who thinks that their browsing habits are hidden from the ISP (without using a VPN)? Who thinks their browsing habits are hidden from anybody? The internet is a packet-switched routed network that sends almost everything in clear text. Anybody who receives or forwards a packet can mine it for data.
gscott 12y ago
I agree... AT&T never says they will not inspect the packets nor keep the Government from inspecting the packets. They just give a lower priced option where they target you with ads/or sell your browsing history, etc. NSA is splitting off the packets 100% at the major uplinks regardless of what AT&T or any other provider does.

morgante 12y ago

To be honest, I'm not so concerned about them looking at my packets. Well, more specifically, I take it as a given of the modern web that any data which people can mine they will mine. What is more concerning is how AT&T actually serves those targeted ads. Are they injecting ads into pages and modifying HTML? That seems like an incredibly disastrous procedure which would hopefully get them into trouble with content providers and even the FCC. I surely hope that's not the case.

bredman 12y ago
In the article there's a screenshot that strongly implies the ads will be coming via email ("this consent supersedes any prior email unsubscribe notification I may have with AT&T")
- jdubs 12y ago
  I have never received an email from att, though they may getting caught in gmail's spam filter. I have also been unable to discern ATT's gigapower ads from other ads.
  - esbranson 12y ago
    So are you saying that you lack the ability to discern AT&T's GigaPower ads from other ads, or are you saying that AT&T's ads are indiscernible from other ads?
downandout 12y ago
More likely than not, they are talking about selling your browsing history to major ad networks that already have ads embedded on the sites you use rather than injecting their own ads into others' content. I assume this to be the primary difference between the "snooping" and "non-snooping" plans, because many ISP's already internally keep some amount of browsing history but don't sell it to third parties. If they are doing ad injection, it is unclear whether or not they could be successfully sued. Some browser plugins with very large user bases inject/modify ads, and although some have received cease and desist letters from content providers, and some have been sued and settled out of court before trial, I don't believe any have gone to trial and lost. The law is murky at best on that issue, and as the ISP, odds are that AT&T would be in a far stronger legal position than even the browser plugins that have been doing this for years.

api 12y ago

Google might be doing the same thing to everyone with Google Fiber. The solution is to encrypt everything. Smother this business model in the crib by making packet inspection worthless.

eyeareque 12y ago

If they've been giving a copy of our packets to the NSA for years, this isn't really that big of a deal with all things considered. Personally, I would never use AT&T for broadband at home again. I'll always go with their competitor and I wish other people would do the same. Their motto should be: monopolize and do evil whenever possible.

pktgen 12y ago
Except said "competitor" is most likely Comcast who is no different.
- eyeareque 12y ago
  Sadly I'd choose comcast over ATT. Let's hope we have more options than that in the future though.
  - pktgen 12y ago
    Difficult situation. I've already decided I will never move to any location, anywhere, where AT&T, Verizon (even FiOS), or Comcast are my only viable options. I hate all of those companies and will never, ever give them a single penny. Even CenturyLink (my current ISP, who happens to be the only choice here besides Comcast) is starting to piss me off lately, but what the hell am I going to do about it...

justizin 12y ago

"In their defense I should have probably read the fine print" Nope.

hardwaresofton 12y ago

While I'm not a fan of the telecoms, AT&T shouldn't be getting flak for this. Google is snoop-by-default (not holding it against them, they are a company looking for profit just like any other), at the very least, AT&T is making the choice here clear. Fiber's privacy notice: https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html It looks like the same snooping that's in all the other google apps (whether to serve you ads or otherwise). I'm glad that it's out in the open, and hopefully it causes people to think about the value of their privacy (and feel a little bit more paranoid about their lack of it) I'm not sure who said it first, or where I heard it, but the belief that "everything google does is a loss leader for adwords" holds true here -- this is why I believe they're going to snoop-by-default, and not think twice about using your data as it flows through their fiber.

aeturnum 12y ago
I agree that it's ok to give users a discount for giving up privacy. The problem, in this case, is how hard to tell: what level of privacy you're giving up, how they'll deliver the ads and that there's "private" option. Google does not have to meet the same standard as they do not have a "private" version (except google apps). If AT&T presented this as $179 + $50 for normal, or $150 + $0 "with special offers" (think kindle model), I think people would be much less worried.

digz 12y ago

Or you can just not subscribe to AT&T. Austin's a great example of a place where customers have choice. Cable provider(s?)/AT&T/DSL/Google Fiber/LTE/LTE/LTE/LTE.

jmilkbal 12y ago

We're working on municipal fiber optic internet in Omaha and this is fantastic ammunition for a project like ours.

justizin 12y ago

comcast charges netflix for interconnects, not prioritization, and everyone is up in arms, but AT&T performs NSA-style deep packet inspection to fuel ads, unless you pay a ransom, and everyone is basically ok with it. This is why I don't think we're ready to pass net neutrality legislation.

bitwize 12y ago

The endpoints may not be interested in the network, but the network is interested in the endpoints. At least in Murka.