Watchdogs Claim NebuAd Hijacking Sites

Thanks for the post, Ron.

I've been following these schmucks for a while now and it still just blows my mind what they're willing to do by way of hijacking, intrusion, and stealth data-mining.

Do you know of any means by which individuals can test to check and see if they are victims of NebuAd's campaign right now? If someone is inside NebuAd's tracking net, do you know any countermeasures s/he could employ? There has to be some way to foil this, no?

Yours,

David

 

From what I've read thus far, no, there is no way out. You CAN opt out of receiving the specialized ads that are the result of NebuAd and Phorm, supposedly, but the tracking is still there. And, since it is hardware that is installed at ISP level, right now there isn't anything that can be done if I understand this whole thing correctly. If you find out your ISP uses such methods (good luck getting them to admit it), you can switch ISPs, but the next ISP you join may do the same thing. Make no mistake about it guys, only governments can stop this sort of nonsense, because ISPs want money, and there is big bucks in it. And, the ISPs' know that if they all start using it, their customers will still stay because there would be no other option.

 

What if you have an encrypted connection to a VPN?

 

That may work, I'm not really sure. The only problem I see is an ISP putting some restriction in place that forbids going that far with encryption or, finding some way around customers encrypting their traffic much as they are getting better at getting past encrypted P2P traffic. Whether they would forbid it in TOS form or what, I don't know.

What bothers me even more right now about it is that businesses are, from what I'm seeing, exempt from all this so far.

 

I am really starting to get pissed off about this. If a person was standing outside of your house going through your mail everyday and scanning it, they would go to prison. But the internet is a "free for all". And there are a lot more communications through the internet. Way more. You know, I have never even considered encrypting phone calls until I read this and also the post about retroactive immunity and a new pass for illegal spying. But now I am seriously thinking about looking into it,

I think Xerobank is coming out with something that encrypts all communications, phone included, unless I completely misread something, but I probably couldn't afford it. I imagine something like that would be pretty expensive. But the other thing too is I would be afraid that doing something like that might actually make things worse. They may think I'm a terrorist or something. But I will certainly consider it, and I will most definitely continue using my VPN.

 

The fact that legislators are getting involved is encouraging. Meanwhile, with regard to the specifics of the NebuAD techniques, a close reading of the report suggests that disabling javascript on the client side would be effective in preventing the hijack.


----
rich

 

That's interesting, I must have missed that part. It's interesting they would use a method that relies on a technology that by now should be well known to be a big part of all these malware attacks. Nevertheless, it's encouraging that it does use that technology and that it can be controlled easily (with a browser other than IE)

 

Nasty ****ers