Rogers ‘interfering with content’
p2pnet news view Advertising | P2P:- Online advertising has become so pervasive that advertisers know the only way they`re going to get you to pay attention is to virtually hit you over the head with a sledgehammer â enter sledgehammer advertising, p2pnet said last year, going on.
A year following Rogers ambushing websites by inserting advertisements into company`s webpages alerting subscriber`s when they reached 75% of their allotted bandwidth usage, Rogers has ambushed their premium subscribers by inserting advertisements within the interface pages of premium subscriber`s to Rogers Yahoo! Mail.”
We were quoting p2pnet reader Kevin Crannie.
Now, “Canadian Internet watchers may recall a controversy in late 2007 when Rogers began experimenting with adding its own content to webpages that its subscribers visit,” blogs Michael Geist, continuing »»»
The company used the technology alert customers about their data usage.
Google was one of the targets of the experiments and the company reacted angrily:
We are concerned about these reports. As a general principle, we believe that maintaining the Internet as a neutral platform means that carriers shouldn’t be able to interfere with Web content without users’ permission. We are in the process of contacting the relevant parties to bring this to a quick resolution.
According to one of my blog readers, the Rogers content substitution approach is back. The image below shows Rogers warning a customer about the expiry of some parental controls. The warning is included in a Flickr page. This approach again raises concerns about Rogers interfering with the delivery of content without permission of the end user.
“When combined with its ongoing policy of redirecting web pages that do not resolve to a company-sponsored paid search page, Rogers own content seems to show up unasked on a regular basis,” Geist adds.
p2pnet – Adscure: sledgehammer advertising, September 19, 2008
Michael Geist – Rogers Again Injects Web Pages With Its Own Content, June 26, 2009
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June 26th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Rogers has been doing things like this for years. I used to have Rogers as my ISP, and when I got my email address from them, they blocked, and yes I said, blocked, my Yahoo Canada email address. I tried three or four times to access my old Yahoo email address only to receive a notice that there was no such email address. Once I got rid of Rogers, I was able to access my mail under my old Yahoo email addy once more. For some reason Rogers seems to think that they can break their agreement with Yahoo Canada whenever they feel like. Just like they are now in regards to Flickr’s free account. They are now shutting down Flickr from Yahoo Canada, and if you don’t subscribe to their paid version of it, they will throttle your bandwidth.
This is a blatant thumb in the eye to anyone who uses Rogers Yahoo and all subscribers to Rogers Internet as well.
The CRTC should make Rogers smarten up or shut them down as ISP’s as they’ve shown they don’t care about their customers, what with their bandwidth shaping, throttling and blocking websites that they feel that their customers have no right to view.
June 26th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
these crokks ill give you what happened to me.
in 1999 i was developing my own firewall software after xzonealamr and otehrs were all shown to have that port 59 problem.
I finally solved not only it but a few other holes and in testing forgot to turn it off.
GUESS WHO WAS USING THAT EXPLOIT TO SPY ON USERS AND MY LIL PROGGY LOGGED IT AND I STILL HAVE THE PROOF IN STAMPED IP LOGS.
Yup rogers scanned ( flooded me ) 650+ times in 5 hrs while i had gone to work and when they could find no hole through, they shut the service off till i got home and complained.
It actually was a federal offense even then to scan someone without there permission and i never received proper notification to not make my own software either?
—————-
Solutions are a plenty for this kinda crude, and again HTTPS is one idea i have another and im not telling them.
I WILL BE ADD FREE
June 26th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Rogers and Bell are two corps that can go under and I would not care a single bit.
they don’t sell services, they shove them down our throats
June 27th, 2009 at 12:32 am
“According to one of my blog readers, the Rogers content substitution approach is back.”
Of course it is. Corporations never drop bad ideas due to customer outrage, they simply put them on hiatus until enough time has passed, then they introduce them again. They keep doing this until people either start to accept it, or learn that it’s useless to fight it.
This won’t stop without government intervention.
June 27th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Hi, Chronoss2009;
Your letter reminded me of another incident with Rogers. I was running Sygate Firewall, a great little firewall that is way better than Norton’s offering, which is why they bought the company and shelved it, and received numerous messages repeatedly that someone was trying to scan my system. Upon checking the IP’s whois I found it was Rogers, so I called them. Seems their security team was trying to get by my firewall to see if I was running a server and they were being blocked. Like you I say this was a blatant attempt at invasion of privacy by Rogers. Sygate even gave me the MAC numbers of their machines doing the scanning and the times as well. For some reason Rogers seems to think that they are above the law and can do what they want. I’m waiting for one of their customers to call the cops on them like the woman in the States did to Comcast when she found her firewall down, and restarted it only to have it shut down in front of her again and warning messages that Comcast was scanning her computer. She went to the window and there were TWO Comcast service trucks sitting in her driveway. She called the cops who came and arrested the four techs and hauled them away charging them with hacking and invasion of privacy.
Same thing should be done with Rogers.
June 27th, 2009 at 10:09 am
As a website owner it seems to me that if anyone or any company that alters my site would be violating my copyright protection.
I am sure that the RIAA would not allow this to happen to any copyrighted material under their control.
As I understand it under that Copyright Act no one has the right to change or alter anything on my site without my permission?
I do believe that the only thing Rogers can do is ban my site from their clients but would that be good business and then again would that also be violating the free internet policies?
Maybe my next step should be to put a warning on my site stating that if any content on this is altered, changed or added to with out the site owners permission is in violation of the United States Copyright Laws and the DMCA.
It’s not a good thing to have to get Big Brother involved but what choice do you have when large corporations decide they can do what ever they want in spite of the law.
Maybe all site owners should group together and file a class action suite?
June 27th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
James, write the Canadian CRTC and tell them Rogers is infringing on your work. (also submit it to Dr. Geist and CIPPIC)
Or do nothing and accept it.
June 27th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
James,
Now that I think more about it, file with your FCC as well and tell them a Canadian monopoly is interfering with your data transmission.
June 27th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
@logan at time i traced allthese ips and htre tried 64 differant ones to get through my custom firewall
all were there security IP{S and htey also TOLD me half htem that they used back hten ( @HOME if you recall) were FBI related ips.
Guess you get attention when you can actually block the boneheads.
related to all this is the SONY ROOTKIT
funny how 5 of us had a very powerful kit that did all the things the sony one did AND MORE!
seems a junior member fo our lil cadre wasnt so cool and leaked parts to SONY as three functions and ways of doing htings and the kit itself was all too similar.
The dangers of security design , there always is some jerk willing to exploit it for greed.
————————————
In other news
The Pirate party of Canada is starting to roll now, check us all out at:
http://piratepartyofcanada.com
maybe Jon you can ask for reciprocal links?
June 27th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Too bad Chronoss can’t be banned from this site like he was banned from michaelgeist.ca.
June 27th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
I don’t think he was banned, but someone gave him a piece of their mind thats for sure.
June 27th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
“Too bad Chronoss canât be banned …”
You’d be surprised how many of his comments (under various names) bite the dust for being OT, or just plain incomprehensible. Or maybe you wouldn’t be
Cheers!
June 28th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
It’s not just the internet with Rogers, they’re doing the same thing with their cable. I’m in central NB canada, and they’ve constantly upped their charges for cable, removing channels and replacing them with total garbage, stating that i can switch to their digital cable system…which they’ve NEVER UPGRADED THE SYSTEM TO USE HERE!!! Then they turn around and rearrange commercials, inserting their own over other station’s programmed ads, and even better, over alternative television option commercials. The funniest thing I’ve ever seen is when an American station’s programming comes on that’s syndicated to a Canadian station in the same timeslot, the American signal is overridden to simulcast the Canadian feed of an American show on the show’s OWN CHANNEL!! ( ie , tonight show on NBC, the screen flickers just before the show starts…on the NBC channel… then comes on when its supposed to be with the ASN, or as its called A now, as the station ID on the screen. Rogers is a federally subsidized JOKE.