Texas based ISP Redmoon has implemented software that hijacks pages being visited by their customers by placing Redmoon’s own ads on these pages.
The technology is provided by NebuAD, which boasts that ISP delivered advertisements are an untapped source of revenue.
Every single web site owner is affected by NebuAD’s technology: whether a site is running ads or not makes no difference, Customers of any ISP evil enough to run NebuAD’s platform are going to see ads on every page on every site; ads that don’t benefit the content creator. It is important to note that these ads are NOT pop-ups, and this is not a free internet service; the ads are served as if they were part of the page, to paying internet customers who are NOT made aware that these ads have been inserted by their ISP.
As a content creator I’m horrified that any page I create could be plastered with advertisements I don’t approve of as I’m sure many others will be as well. There are probably copyright issues as well in terms of hijacking original works for profit. We can only hope that this evil form of advertising does not spread beyond Texas.
(Image Credit: Ben Anderson via)
Would content owners be able block the IP addresses of these ISPs?
Instead could content owners show a page saying why they are blocking this ISP, perhaps suggesting the user switches ISP and even show (paid for) links to competing ISPs?
Surely we can just make a function that tweaks the DOM to remove this crap… and then keep a tally for every advert removed. — Turn this into a bill for the ISP company.
I heard it is quite common among China’s ISP
Charter has replaced my 404 web page not found with their own advertizing page and paid ads.
G
This software must be prohibited and punished for it´s use. An ads blocker can´t avoid this soft…I think there is a plug in for this stuff. This article should be on every single web to aware users.
It’d be interesting to see what the ISPs TOS said before they started to grab up real estate on their customer’s websites.
It also seems like kind of a dishonest way to use someone else’s website to serve up ads…possibly even competing ads. If my ISP started using my hard-earned traffic for those purposes they could definitely expect a call from me and my attorney.
@Owen,
We already offer that functionality for users. You can block any domain you’d like (actually you can’t block .com, opendns.com or overture.com, but that’s it).
-David
@Jonas,
They are more than welcome to contact us. That goes for hardware manufacturers too.
-David
Sounds like a perfect motivator for solo to medium sized business to operate their own web server (box) where they “control” the pages being delivered. Or specifically look for honorable hosts that are VERY explicit that they will never do this sort of income hijacking.
A “service” such as this one is problematic, especially for people who are not particularly tech savvy. While most of us will be able to figure out a way around this problem, the Average Joe will not. I can’t imagine that this will be something tolerated for long.
First as far as the customers. They have to be pretty dumb to be paying for a broadband ISP that does that.
Second, this is pretty much asking for a lawsuit. Inserting ads on (on top of) other people’s web properties, not a good idea. Sounds like old school Gator and other adware type stuff.
So this won’t last long.
They should only do this to customers who agree to it and those customers should pay less or nothing.
This is no different from cable TV companies inserting ads in the pay TV channels, which they do regularly where I live.
“They should only do this to customers who agree to it and those customers should pay less or nothing.”
Actually it doesn’t matter how the customers feel about it. It’s the old argument of who owns the desktop. If someone comes to my site or anybody’s site here, an ISPs ads shouldn’t show up. If you want to use behavioral targetting on your own site, that’s one thing. Over or on other web properties, problem.
what a bunch of jerks!
I don’t think it’s a technical argument at all. It’s legal and if you enter into a contract with an ISP that will provide their own adds and you get Internet access for cheap then I think that would be a big business driver of the service.
So… is it legal? Seems like it is.
I am surprised at everybody’s reaction. Don’t you understand that ads fuel the web? Up a level - how do you think media (TV-cable-newspapers-radio) can to sustain itself? And why everybody assumes that nebuad is evel, and google is not? Because they will insert the ads without website permission? Are you sure? Do you know their business model?
I’m surprised nobody’s brought up the DCMA.
One of the major requirements for the safe harbor provision for service providers is that they do not alter or filter the data they transmit. This is clearly such an alteration.
Hence, they are now legally responsible for any pirating, illegal pornography (kiddie stuff, etc), and other shit that transmits over their network.
Check it out: Google the DCMA for yourself.
“This is similar to Gator’s adware serving competitors pop ads based on what website you were viewing”
Markus, funny you mention that, they’ve hired (or tried to hire) a lot of former Gator/Claria employees from what I’ve heard.
This is really horrible stuff. Things cudn’t possibly get any worse if such menace spreads over the internet. ISPs like these sld be banned and customers should know better than to use their services. Why pay for an ISP that hijacks their pages?
What I fear is that if this form of advertising works out, there might be ISPs in the future who will offer free internet connectivity in exchange for Ad display. If that happens it’s going to be a very bad mess for content based websites.
In any case serving ads right on the webpage is illegal and the company must be sued.
I would provide a full screen shoot, but we stored blocking the URL for Fair Eagle, and it now appears that they’ve removed or turned off the injection of the JavaScript.
The ads are in floating Divs and can be moved around in FF, but not IE. All browsers can close the ads by manually clicking the ‘x’ in the corner, but because it is injected inbound all browsers are affected. Most of the time it doesn’t appear to work in Opera, and it only appears to work on .com domains. It never shows up in the HTML for other sites. The ads only appear when the content is centered with margins on the side. If the computer uses a low resolution or the browser is sized smaller that the website requires to display its content then the ads don’t appear.
Luckily it didn’t affect outbound HTML, so the ads weren’t appended to our pages we served, but it annoyed the heck out of us.
When I tried the opt-out cookie it didn’t stop the injection or the ads. The Opt-out is only for the privacy agreement.
It doesn’t appear to replace any existing ads, just adds more in annoying floating windows.
“they’ve hired (or tried to hire) a lot of former Gator/Claria employees from what I’ve heard.”
“It doesn’t appear to replace any existing ads, just adds more in annoying floating windows.”
Yep. This is Gator 2.0!
Now for someone to write some server side code that redirects requests from the ISP’s customers to an information page about what they’re doing, with links to alternative providers in their area.
I’d certainly use this tactic on my site.
I have to say this is outragous, the only way this can be legal would be if it’s in the ISP’s terms and conditions, even so to think that any of my sites could be shown with advertising and potentially advertising that is unsuitable for my site’s content, like churches etc then I feel this is out of hand.
I certainly hope this does not become the norm, and more importantly i hope they don’t enforce a premium connection that doesn’t have these advertisements as that would be beyond belief!
Does anybody have a copy of Redmoon’s Privacy Policy/Terms of Service? Nothing is available on their website.
Something tells me that this practice is so much affront and scam, that by next year all providers would do this - one way or another. Mostly depends on how much money can be made with this model and if profit would offset the cost of lawsuits.
Seems like several of you would like to go back to the 80’s.
Do you understand the Google is nothing but an advertising machine? Their search is only a means to get advertising. Hold onto your hats because the analysts say that ALL of the major carriers will be using this technology because it brings relevant ads to subscribers via “behavioral targeting”.
Evil… yes… but I see this feature as a future source of “blackmail” in that “pay the isp an extra x$ a month to NOT have this technology implemented across your sites” kinda thing.
Jon
Aol use to have a fake internet / with a large black list of sites you couldn’t visit / including most Anti AOL sites
- Its a simple legal matter / You stuff a clause in teh middle of your TOS / that states - you provide … blah blah blah … for whatever.
- now this technology could help NetZero be a better - ADvertiser
The EFF should get involved–or some other group that represents the techs. Take those bastards to court for copyright violation and IP infringement.
Shut ‘em down, and donate the $ from the liquidation of their assets to charity!!
For sites that don’t sell stuff, ad revenue is the only way some folks make a living…
On second thought, there’s definite legal precedent regarding this sort of thing…and definitely a way for all those sites affected to sue for lost revenue, etc.
Theft of site real estate is still theft. Might as well reach into a billion website’s cash registers and help yourself. (let alone the possibility of inappropriate ads being served up—porn, anyone?)
Someone, end them.
End them, please.
Hmmm… I seem to recall a lot of ISPs defending themselves from libel charges, music industry piracy charges, etc. by way of arguing that they were not involved in the content. I wonder if the situation changes in this case. If one of these guys’ customers goes to a gambling site, child porn site, music piracy site, or whatever and these guys insert an ad, would they lose that shield and then could the Attorney General go after them?
#82 BloggerBoy may be on to something. If they lose common carrier status, they’re in the way of all content lawsuits.
liquidboy - ” I take great care in delivering a good user experience, now ISP’s are gonna take that away from me!
If this happens, and i highly doubt it, then ill be going down the legal courts avenue!”
Yeah, I do not think Google, or Microsoft, etc, will take kindly to this sort of thing
Why do websites that are full of ads speak of articles as if having ads is a bad thing? This site is riddled with advertisements. Anyhow, it would have to be copyright infringement upon every www creator to be placing these ads on their pages without their consent. If any of the pages we design are reported to us with having these ads put on them, compensation will be demanded in court. And for the record,
google = censorship, regardless of what they are tring to do, look no further then the owners shielding their personal information off the search giant. they don’t want you to find them, but they want everyone else to be able to find you, that’s censorship, that’s communism, that’s google:)
have a nice day!
I have no problem with adverts - or even models that add advertising in - free services that have a frameset with a banner in.
What I do object to is people inserting crap into my carefully constructed user experience. This is not like the cable company putting adverts between segments - this is like the cable company using CGI to insert things into the show or just placing big banners over the top of the show while it is running.
If it does become commonplace there will be a massive shift of power in the internet from the content providers to the ISP’s - for example if I am free to modify pages why not write a simple script that identifies google adwords and replaces them with my own chunk of identical HTML but with adverts I have sold instead. If enough ISP’s are doing this who in their right mind would pay google for ads that never got seen because ISP’s where not delivering them.
There are 3 issues here, there is no copyright issue. No one is stealing your content and using it as their own. It is deceitful, immoral, and potentually illegal.
1. The customer of the ISP. If the customer does not read the agreement that states by using this ISP he/she will allow these ads to be displayed, and without blocking them, could end up in legal trouble with the ISP if you block the ads. Even if you claim ignorance because you didn’t read the agreement you will still be liable for the ISP’s lost ad revenue. An agreement is a binding legal contract even if you don’t read it. Read the fine print BEFORE you agree to do anything!
2. The web site owner. If I have a web site that I choose to be ad free for whatever reason and some ISP overlays an ad on my site without my permission, this is hijacking my site for the purpose of making money. If I have a very successful site the ISP would have access to thousands of potential customers and added revenue with compensating me.
3. The legitiment advertiser. If I’m an advertiser on a website that pays for impressions instead of click throughs my ad could be covered by the overlayed ad causing me to potentially lose revenue. This would be the same as me advertising on a billboard and another company comes along and erects a billboard directly in front of mine. My ad is still there but, because no one can see it, I have lost potential revenue.
Does anyone know the class names, ids or any other relevant information that would allow web site providers to block this without modifying their layout?
Hi,
sorry distrub to every body,this is not comment i need help regarding injection of isp .
I am Raghuvardhan doing masters in Networking and going to present the paper on ISP injection ,could any one give the sourcode how to adding the adds to exinsting web page.please help me .
please feel free and mailed me Raghu_reddii@rediff.com OR raghu_reddii@yahoo.com
Thnks and regards
Raghuavrdhan