Comcast Is Threatening to Cut Off Customers Who Use Tor

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/comcast-threatening-cut-off-customers-092817979.html

by bndr • 12 years ago

83 29 12 years ago

finance.yahoo.com

cik3• 12 years ago

This is how it begins. First they come for TOR, then they come for VPNs. Eventually, they come for your SSL certs.

smnrchrds• 12 years ago

Done, done and done. Well, not necessarily in that order. Living in Iran sometimes feels like living in the future. Unfortunately it's a slightly dystopian future.

cik3• 12 years ago

It's also like the past. It blows my mind that the dystopian future we read about is always the UK - and that so much dystopian fiction comes out of Britain as well.

od9• 12 years ago

But, they're not coming for TOR. Comcast is explicitly stating that they have not problem with it. Here's their response to the issue:

On Monday morning, a report surfaced claiming that Comcast has been discouraging customers from using the Tor Browser, a browsing program designed to allow users to surf the Internet with greater anonymity than most browsers. Monday’s report was repackaged on a number of other sites, stating that Comcast has "declared war on the Tor Browser." The report goes on to suggest that Comcast has contacted some users telling them that they risk disconnection if they continue using Tor. The report may have generated a lot of clicks but is totally inaccurate.

Comcast is not asking customers to stop using Tor, or any other browser for that matter. We have no policy against Tor, or any other browser or software. Customers are free to use their Xfinity Internet service to visit any website, use any app, and so forth.

Here are the facts:

Comcast doesn’t monitor our customer’s browser software, web surfing or online history.

The anecdotal chat room evidence described in these reports is not accurate.

We respect customer privacy and security and only investigate and disclose certain information about a customer's account with a valid court order or other appropriate legal process, just like other ISPs. More information about these policies can be found in our Transparency Report here.

We do not terminate customers for violating the Copyright Alert System (aka "six strikes"), which is a non-punitive, educational and voluntary copyright program. Read more here.

Our customers can use Tor at any time, as I have myself. I’m sure many of them are using it right now.

orr94• 12 years ago

Comcast Is Threatening To Cut Off Customers Who Use Tor, The Web Browser For Criminals

Uh, it's not "The Web Browser For Criminals". It's for people who want anonymity. And being slightly pedantic, Tor is also not a web browser. Tor Browser is.

hawleyal• 12 years ago

Get back in the designated free-speech zone, plebian.

ObviousScience• 12 years ago

I find it hilarious that they pitch Tor as for criminals, despite the US military being the largest backer (and source) of the Tor project.

cik3• 12 years ago

It does start to beg the question of whether or not we can trust TOR. Personally, I'm far more interested in meshnets, and other encrypted networks now.

fluidcruft• 12 years ago

[insert typical libertarian talking points about government being criminals]

Zikes3• 12 years ago

AT&T U-Verse admitted to actively disrupting my connection whenever I used torrents.

mayneack• 12 years ago

Was it based on connecting with the wrong tracker or identifying torrent traffic?

Zikes3• 12 years ago

As far as I could tell it was by identifying the type of traffic.

I was primarily torrenting various linux distros, and I tried a wide variety of them on various clients and systems. It was fairly consistent behavior, even if I torrented a 'buntu distro on my phone and throttled it to a few KBps my TV's Netflix would stutter, degrade, and ultimately drop out entirely within a few minutes. If I stopped the torrent the connection would resume normally a few minutes later.

One thing that really bothered me, though, was that every time I experienced this problem I could go to speedtest.net and run their tool and get consistently good results every time. Even when the rest of the internet was bollocks. It makes me wonder if they intentionally toss speed test traffic into one of their "fast lanes" to trick people into thinking they're getting faster speeds than what they're actually getting.

w1ntermute• 12 years ago

Sounds like a great way to cancel your Comcast service when they just won't let you go: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/jul/17/...

illumen• 12 years ago

Comcast denies this.

mark-r• 12 years ago

I don't know much about how TOR works, but could you use it over a VPN so that it's outside of Comcast's network before connecting to TOR? Surely they'd never ban VPN.

herge• 12 years ago

Surely they'd never ban VPN.

Wait until all file-sharing is done through VPNs. Or maybe they'll require people to pay for a "business" plan to use such a "business" feature.

dj-wonk• 12 years ago

The source article is more detailed and worth reading: http://www.deepdotweb.com/2014/09/13/comcast-declares-war-to...

doubt_me• 12 years ago

1. Be comcast

2. How do I get the NSA off my back as much as possible?

3. Oh lets threaten to cut off customers service because of Tor! that will totally work (comcast logic)

4. ....NSA still on our backs guys what do I do?

5. Ban Tor

6. Make NSA happy = TWC merger will happen

7. NSA still not happy

8. Spend millions on trying to kill net neutrality because the survival of comcast/ twc/ NBC universal depends on it

jrochkind1• 12 years ago

Where I live, comcast is pretty much the ONLY broadband provider. There are lots of places like this.

These are the risks of a monopoly on broadband internet access.

(Did you go send your comments to the FCC saying to treat ISP's like common carriers yet?

1) Go to http://fcc.gov/comments 2) Click on Proceeding 14-28 3) Say "I want internet service providers classified as common carriers." )

Nanzikambe• 12 years ago

Could someone take these guys to court and force them to rebrand themselves as a SISP (Some Internet Services Provider) ?

ufmace• 12 years ago

I know it's popular in tech circles these days to hate on Comcast, and I'm not saying they don't deserve the hate or that they wouldn't do something like this, but I'm not buying this one just yet. This is all supposedly statements by 2 telephone support people.

The actual source article seems to be confusing running a connection to Tor and the Tor browser with running a Tor relay node or exit node. Prohibiting the Tor browser would be a bad move on the part of any ISP who isn't part of a police state, but none of their document suggest that they're doing that. I can understand them prohibiting running a Tor node on your residential internet connection though. Almost all residential ISPs officially prohibit running servers, though it usually isn't enforced as long as you aren't pushing too much traffic. A Tor node can easily fall on those lines. I think even the Tor project doesn't recommend running nodes on your home connection rather than actual servers with server-class connections.

sailfast• 12 years ago

Thank you for this. This may be a stupid question, but how would your ISP know you were actively running a Tor (non-node) connection?

Obviously I need to read up on all the back-end tech but I would assume that if it was easy to identify someone using Tor, it would no longer provide the anonymity / security because it would clearly identify outliers.

It makes sense to ban someone running a node off their Comcast connection (not because it's logical but because of their high traffic / server banning track record) but for Comcast to detect a browsing session? Seems odd.

nitrogen• 12 years ago

Using DPI or even just flow analysis (sizes, port numbers, destination addresses, protocol (TCP/UDP) bits, and timings of packets), it should be possible to distinguish between encrypted TOR and other encrypted protocols with ease.

stevekl• 12 years ago

I use TOR and I would really like to get a call from comcast so that I can inform Comcast I am using a Navy funded project.

at-fates-hands• 12 years ago

I got lucky. I went with Century Link when I found out the D-Mark is about 50 yards from my house and haven't looked back.

Dropped my bill by about $40/month and the customer service is a bit more. . .reliable than Comcast.

kstenerud• 12 years ago

The title of this posting is wholly inaccurate. Comcast is DENYING that any threat to cut off Tor users occurred. They deny most points in the article on DeepDotWebm including all alleged evidence, and have flatly stated that customers can use Tor all they want.

Comcast Is Threatening to Cut Off Customers Who Use Tor

Related Stories