On May 2nd I found evidence that Mediacom was sniffing my internet traffic. I filed a complaint with the FCC once I was certain I wasn’t going to get cooperation from Mediacom. Today, I received a response from Mediacom.
Dear Ms. Bowers (the FCC representative who followed up with Mediacom)
This letter is in response to a letter that we receved from your office regarding a complaint from Michael David Stemle, Jr. that involves the high-speed data service that he receives from Mediacom. While the complaint involves facets of Internet access service not currently regulated by the Commission, I would like to inform the Commission of the results of my investigation of the complaint.
In the complaint, the customer states that Mediacom filters the customer’s requests and responses when he tries to access websites, and redirects the customer to Mediacom’s search results page.
Mediacom does not do what the customer is claiming. If a customer types a non-existent web page address into the address bar, such as www.foxskorts.com (instead of the popular www.foxsports.com), then the customer will be directed to a page that lists choices of websites that the customer may have intended, and some choices on there may be advertised spaces and would be identified as such. This is done because Mediacom’s search page is the default browser for incorrect addresses. This setting can be changed to whatever browser the customer would like to use. If Mr. Stemle would like to contact me, I will have a representative call him and walk him through these steps at his convenience.
Then this guy goes into some Internet Explorer tutorial on how to change my default search engine. He concludes with the following:
I will now consider the matter closed. Should you or Mr. Stemle need any further information, please contact me using the information below.
There are obviously some holes in this guy’s story. First, he claims this is a browser setting, when this is actually something coming from the ether. Neither my computer–which is a Mac running Safari, not a Windows box running Internet Explorer–nor the third party website has directed me to the assist.mediacom.com webpage.
Dear Ms. Bowers,
I have reviewed the letter from Mr. McKnight (Mediacom attorney) and found it to be inaccurate. I would like to take this opportunity to clarify my complaint and to provide some evidence which I hope will make this matter clear for both the FCC and for Mediacom’s representative.
My complaint is not that Mediacom filters all traffic, but rather that Mediacom engages in what is known as “deep packet inspection.” In addition to a telephone call where Mediacom customer support disclosed that such techniques were being used, I discovered that these techniques were being used when on the night of May 2nd at 11:17PM (US-Central time) I did make the HTTP request of the following URL: [http://sva.notsosoft.net/fdhkasjhfsd.htm]
Upon making this request I received a “HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found” response from the server, which is correct. What I noticed was that while the HTTP headers remained unmodified, the body of the HTTP response included this code which Mediacom did in fact deceptively inject (bold added to highligh executing client-side JavaScript code):
<HTML><script>window.location=’http://assist.mediacomcable.com/mediacomassist_pnf/dnsassist/main/?domain=’+escape(window.location);</script><body>The Search Guide redirection service has been enabled to provide helpful searches from browser queries. You entered a non-existent url and your browser attempted to redirect you with Javascript. To enable this please update your browser preferences. <a href=’http://search.mediacomcable.com/prefs.php’>To turn off this feature please click this here</a></body></HTML>
The effect of this code is to instantly cause the browser to redirect to the page http://assist.mediacomcable.com/mediacomassist_pnf/dnsassist/main/ with the query string parameter of the domain equalling the URL from the request which resulted in the 404 message. While this seems like a benign action, it has some potentially far-reaching consequences including unsolicited advertisements, sale of user data, bogus claims of intellectual property infringement, and a complete trashing of the fourth amendment rights of users.
It has been frightful this last decade to watch as internet service providers have engaged in warrantless wiretapping, packet spoofing, and disclosure of traffic data to the RIAA and MPAA. We all watched in horror as courts ruled that by virtue of users knowing that Gmail service was provided with advertising that they had no reasonable expectation of privacy, and therefore no Fourth Amendment protection with regard to email in their Gmail account. In addition, this robs me of my ability to enter into any new non-disclosure agreements with any third party while using my internet connection as I have no way of knowing what Mediacom looks for and collects, and with whom they disclose what they collect.
Contrary to Mr. McKnight’s claim, this is not a preference within my browser–I am not using Internet Explorer, I am not using Windows, I am using Safari on a Mac which does not redirect 404 errors to search engines in any way. While Mediacom does have what they call an “opt-out” option, this does not actually solve the problem. The opt-out option likely does not disengage the deep packet inspection, it likely only disengages the redirect. The problem is the deep packet inspection, not the redirection. The redirection is merely a symptom of this unethical practice. I have asked Mediacom to have technical personnel explain to me in detail as to the nature of the opt-out mechanism in place, but to date Mediacom has chosen not to fulfil this request.
On the phone call with Mediacom technical support, more than one technician did disclose that Mediacom inspects packets of users for several reasons including (and likely not limited to) virus detection, traffic-shaping, as well as the detection of copyright infringement for the purposes of disclosure to recording industry professionals and disconnection of consumer connections.
While I understand that the FCC is not currently regulating internet carrier behavior like this, I view this as highly unethical, especially when it is a practice which is not disclosed to consumers. Furthermore, I am greatly concerned that I was able to find technical people within Mediacom who were informed and did disclose this information, yet Mr. McKnight failed to even do such basic research as I had. More than one technician within Mediacom–both in the call center and technicians which respond to service calls–have told me they understand this unethical packet inspection to be a common practice within Mediacom, yet senior counsel within Mediacom seems unaware of this practice.
Since I contacted Mediacom regarding this matter they have since dispatched a technician to my house to re-wire my house, which was entirely unnecessary, wasting the time of both their technician and that of my lovely wife. While some Mediacom technicians have claimed that these unethical practices can enhance performance for Mediacom users, my neighbors and I know all too well that Mediacom has a record of poor network performance, and it is likely that deep packet inspection is exacerbating the problem.
All I ask from Mediacom is that they cease deep packet inspection on my connection. If this practice is not going on, and I am mistaken, I would appreciate it if technical personnel within Mediacom could explain the error in my argument, and I would request a letter declaring that deep packet inspection is not going on, and that I would be unreasonable to believe Mediacom is in any way inspecting or modifying packets between my home network and the server from which data was requested.
I do not consider this matter closed, I will continue to pursue this matter with authorities local and federal to the extent I can, and I do still maintain that Mediacom does violate the ethical expectations of their customers by engaging in this practice. Should either Mr. McKnight or the FCC require further information from me, my information is below.
Sincerely yours,
Michael D. Stemle, Jr.
This is going in the post tonight, hopefully we can get this matter addressed soon. I’m considering sending this to my senators, congressmen, and Illinois’ attorney general as well.
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