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.<p>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.
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.<p>This is why we need to decentralize the ISPs and move to local mesh networks.
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.<p>As another poster mentioned - if I get really paranoid, I will eventually set up a VPN, and tunnel all of my traffic through that.<p>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.
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.
The prices seem insane - are they representative of the US broadband market?<p>I'm currently paying 15 EUR/mth for a 100mbit service, more bandwidth would be more expensive, but not extremely so.
I am a bit confused by this.<p>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)?<p>So is this just an expensive opt out of targetted ads, or is it actually providing extra privacy features?
I'm sure most corporations suck (it's inherent in their size, structure and purpose). But I <i></i>know<i></i> AT&T sucks. I've loathed them, ever since their backing of the Clipper Chip.<p>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.
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.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>This is why I don't think we're ready to pass net neutrality legislation.
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.<p>Fiber's privacy notice:
<a href="https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html" rel="nofollow">https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html</a><p>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)<p>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.
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.
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.
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.