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

http://gigaom.com/2014/05/13/atts-gigapower-plans-turn-privacy-into-a-luxury-that-few-would-choose/?

by TwoFactor • 12 years ago

213 133 12 years ago

rayiner10• 12 years 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• 12 years 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.

rayiner10• 12 years 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.

whoismua• 12 years 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.

chiph2• 12 years ago

Paying someone extra to not do something you don't like is commonly called paying protection money.

rayiner10• 12 years 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.

xhrpost4• 12 years 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".

equalarrow• 12 years 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• 12 years 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?

chiph2• 12 years ago

Yes. There have been cases where ISPs were caught injecting/replacing ads in the HTML stream.

PeterisP2• 12 years 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.

jessaustin10• 12 years ago

The classic reference for this is:

https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/2011/08/11/the-five-levels-of-isp...

What you're describing could be any or all of levels 4, 3, or 2.

phkahler• 12 years ago

I was going to ask that same question but decided to read all the other comments first. That practice should be illegal IMHO. That is altering content. Creating derivative works? It'd clearly be anti-competetive if the replaced others ads with their own.

graylights• 12 years ago

IANAL but it seems they could lose safe harbor protections provided by DMCA and be liable for ALL copyrighted material going over their system:

"Section 512(a) protects service providers who are passive conduits from liability for copyright infringement, even if infringing traffic passes through their networks. In other words, provided the infringing material is being transmitted at the request of a third party to a designated recipient, is handled by an automated process without human intervention, is NOT MODIFIED IN ANY WAY, and is only temporarily stored on the system, the service provider is not liable for the transmission."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_L...

nandhp• 12 years ago

"You might receive these offers or ads online, via email or through direct mail."

ds92• 12 years ago

They're probably selling the opportunity to ad networks. IOW, the site operator 'O' contracts with ad network 'A', and A uses data from the ISP to decide which ads to serve to which clients via O's site.

So the ISP is not necessarily interfering in O's contract with A by replacing ads or such -- at least, it doesn't necessarily work that way. I really don't know, some ISPs have been caught replacing content or injecting ads, but in principle the scheme could be managed without doing so.

(My description is from descriptions a few years ago when ISPs were sneakily trying a DPI setup)

kenthorvath2• 12 years 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• 12 years 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• 12 years ago

You know your ISP is crap when you have to pay another ISP(VPN) to keep your connection secure and private.

jessaustin10• 12 years ago

Or you could pay an additional $5/month for a decent VPN.

TIL another reason why Ma Bell doesn't like neutrality. If they get their way we can expect performance on unobfuscated VPNs to suffer.

mnw21cam2• 12 years ago

ITYM obfuscated?

roc• 12 years ago

You can certainly expect it -- and not just because technical users could use VPNs to end-run traffic shaping.

You can expect it because VPNs are overwhelmingly used by technologists and 'business' users. In general, these people have an ability to pay (much) more, so ISPs would like to charge them more.

digitalengineer• 12 years ago

Personal (non-company) VPN still doens't fully work on smartphones. It needs to be manually activated each time, making 'all-traffic-behind-vpn' impossible for now. It is possible for coporate VPN's so we know iPhones can do it. A choice by Apple HQ?

computer• 12 years ago

Do it on your router, so that all devices that connect over wifi are automatically router through your VPN.

lazerwalker• 12 years ago

I don't know how they're accomplishing it technically, but http://getcloak.com manages to auto-enable my VPN on my iPhone every time I connect to a non-whitelisted wireless network.

nodata• 12 years ago

I just checked my phone, and Android 4.4.2 supports always-on VPN.

ingenium• 12 years ago

Works fine for me with OpenVPN on Android (4.4.2 on a Galaxy S4 and Nexus 7). It will only prompt to accept the VPN the first time it's run. If you leave it running in the background it will re-establish the connection whenever it needs to.

That being said, I also have an Xposed module to get rid of the confirmation prompt entirely (I use Tasker to enable the VPN automatically when my phone connects to unsecured wifi networks).

I can't speak to how Apple does it, so maybe it's just an OpenVPN vs IPsec thing. If you setup your own IPsec VPN you could possibly have it activated automatically. There was a post on HN a few months ago with a script to basically setup an IPsec VPN automatically for you.

spacefight• 12 years ago

I don't get why people are pushing folks towards VPN. If you use one, you shift your endpoint from Provider A to Provider B. And you have absolutely no guarantee ever, that the upstream link of provider B or that provider B itself (accounting, user association etc etc) is not rigged...

True, a VPN in hostile environments might be a good idea. If the termination endpoint is secure, is another question.

mbreese2• 12 years ago

I think it has more to do with the network peering arrangements of the VPN host more than privacy. At least that would be the benefit from my point of view.

If my ISP has a poor path to (for example) Netflix, but my VPN provider has a good (unsaturated) path, it could be advantageous. But this requires my ISP to have a good connection to my VPN provider.

Havoc• 12 years ago

I had a discussion about this with one of the guys from PIA VPN...you can pay via bitcoin and the info required for sign-up is kinda uhm spartan.

No chance of pushing any serious traffic through a VPN though unless you control it.

Unfortunately, in my case a VPN would probably put me on weaker legal ground. My ISP is not legally entitled to monitor my traffic...once it hits the VPN provider the local laws apply & I can do without US laws on the privacy front.

BryanB55• 12 years ago

Does anyone have any recommendations on a VPN that can keep up with gigabit speeds?

blueskin_3• 12 years ago

All sorts of VPS providers to choose from; main issue is that most 'budget' plans will be 100mbit.

gfisher2• 12 years 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• 12 years 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.

judk2• 12 years ago

Google works a lot harder to protect your data and not download a copy to every government office, unlike AT&T

Tepix• 12 years 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.

gfisher2• 12 years ago

The only place where you are hidden from them is at work.

Of course, at work we have Gigapower as well.

coldcode• 12 years 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• 12 years 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.

ds92• 12 years 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

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• 12 years 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.

Centigonal• 12 years ago

Unless you're part of the minority that doesn't use Google for search, you're pretty much saturated with AdWords. I mean, maybe they'll add more ads on search result pages, knowing you can't switch away?

Google dominance in the ISP market will probably have its own share of problems for consumers, but I hazard that they will be different and less infuriating problems than what we get with the current status quo.

PeterisP2• 12 years 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.

xhrpost4• 12 years 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• 12 years 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• 12 years 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".

chimeracoder• 12 years 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• 12 years ago

I just moved from a rural property where I was paying $120/mos for 1.5mbps nominally (sometimes lower...rarely higher...).

I'm now paying $60/mos for 120Mbps down and 10Mbps up.

endersshadow• 12 years ago

The US chose to deal with telecoms differently than the EU, thinking it would incentivize investment and create copetition for better networks. What it's done is the opposite. Planet Money ran a great episode[1] about it. It's worth a listen!

[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/04/04/299060527/episode-...

rayiner10• 12 years ago

I'm currently paying 15 EUR/mth for a 100mbit service

Where do you live?

Here in Philly (and also in Boston, DC, and New York), RCN charges $50/month for 110 mbit service. This is apparently quite similar to similar service in Prague, London, and Dublin: http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/10/cheapest-150mbps-bro....

rsynnott2• 12 years ago

Hrm, not sure why they used Magnet as an example for Dublin, there; you can get the same service for cheaper from other providers, if you're willing to take out a contract (Magnet is month-to-month) and UPC's 120mbit service is also cheaper.

cbg0• 12 years ago

Prices can vary wildly depending where you live on the planet. For 13.5 EUR per month in most cities in Romania, you can get:

1000 mbps download speed to the Internet

30 mpbs upload speed to the Internet

100 mbps upload speed inside the provider's network

Uncapped traffic

20GB Cloud storage

Free Wi-Fi in public places where the ISP is present

IPv6, Dynamic DNS, Parental Control

DanBC2• 12 years ago

I would love to see sensible comparisons of available bandwidth for different countries. This would have to include some weird kludges of average pricing over cable, dial-up, satellite, and mobile. (And maybe wifi plans too).

The ISP industry doesn't feel like a free market.

rsynnott2• 12 years ago

Also, extremely regional. For instance, I currently get a 12mbit/sec service for 30 euro a month. In my old apartment, less than a mile away, I got 120mbit/sec for 40 euro a month (and could have gotten 200mbit/sec for 45). Assuming that the telecom gets a move on with its VDSL rollout, in a couple of months, I'll get 100mbit for 35 euro a month. And that's in a city; it gets a lot messier in many rural areas, where the only plausible non-wireless providers can be fixed microwave.

That said, there's no consumer service remotely as expensive as that AT&T one here.

xhrpost4• 12 years 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.

wmf2• 12 years 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.

xhrpost4• 12 years 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?

natdempk2• 12 years 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• 12 years ago

It's not anonymized, is it?

ticktocktick• 12 years ago

Now we know why common carrier will never happen.

jamieb• 12 years ago

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

mcherm• 12 years ago

No, there are laws preventing it.

coherentpony• 12 years ago

There are also laws preventing unreasonable search and seizure, but it still happens.

mbreese2• 12 years 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/SB1000142412788732346370...

http://www.attpublicpolicy.com/privacy/our-updated-privacy-p...

ehPReth• 12 years 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• 12 years 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.

DanBC2• 12 years 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?

natdempk2• 12 years 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• 12 years 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&...

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.

rayiner10• 12 years 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• 12 years 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.

morgante2• 12 years 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• 12 years 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• 12 years 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.

downandout2• 12 years 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.

DerpDerpDerp2• 12 years ago

I actually think that AT&T would be in a weaker position than the browser plugins.

AT&T is a message relayer, while the browser plugin is a specific program installed by the user to modify the messages they receive.

There's no legal question I could hire a secretary to open my mail for me, and white-out the lines I told her I didn't want to see, but it would be a little strange for a mail carrier to open messages and insert ads.

btown• 12 years ago

Not only can they sell your browsing history, they are in the unique position to associate your current IP address with your browsing history, and sell real-time access to that information. If I open up an Incognito window right now and go to a site I've never visited before, they couldn't serve me targeted ads, because without cookies they'd have no reliable way of knowing that I was the same 111.222.111.222 that connected a few days ago. But now, AT&T could set up a server that ad networks can call out to, that can return a browsing profile if queried with an IP address. You've given them permission to do that. As far as I know, Tor is the only way to circumvent this... and with the forthcoming FCC rules, Tor traffic could be significantly rate-limited. This is a pretty big deal.

api• 12 years 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.

eyeareque2• 12 years 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.

pktgen2• 12 years ago

Except said "competitor" is most likely Comcast who is no different.

eyeareque2• 12 years ago

Sadly I'd choose comcast over ATT. Let's hope we have more options than that in the future though.

justizin3• 12 years ago

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

Nope.

hardwaresofton• 12 years 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

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• 12 years 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• 12 years 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• 12 years ago

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

justizin3• 12 years 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• 12 years ago

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

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

Related Stories