Comcast's public Wi-Fi hotspots injecting ads into your browsing experience

Himanshu Arora

Posts: 902   +7

In a move that's bound to raise security concerns, Comcast has started inserting ads on websites you visit while using any of the company's 3.5 million publicly accessible Wi-Fi hotspots across the US.

The matter came to light after Ryan Singel, co-founder of startup Contextly, observed these ads and did some investigation to find out where they were coming from. "When a user requests to view a page, Comcast injects its JavaScript into the packets being returned by the real server," Singel said, adding that the ads appeared once every seven minutes, and lasted for a few seconds.

When contacted, a Comcast spokesperson said the program, that began months ago, is designed to let users know they are connected to an authentic Comcast hotspot, as well as to serve ads that promote the company's Xfinity mobile apps.

While Comcast's intentions may be sincere, as it is certainly possible for hackers to make a Wi-Fi router look like an authentic Xfinity hotspot, injecting JavaScript into a website is certainly not the most proper way of doing it, primarily because it can be used to perform malicious actions like controlling authentication cookies, redirecting where use data is submitted, and more.

The news come at a time when there is already a growing demand to regulate broadband like a telephone utility, something which would have brought Comcast's JavaScript practice under scrutiny. Just yesterday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wrote a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, asking the agency to ban so-called "Internet fast lanes" by regulating broadband under Title II.

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As they say, free comes with an AD up your a$$. And according to the providers, it is not the worst-case scenario. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
 
God-damn I wish they would regulate the ad usage somehow. It is already to the point of half our browsing experience being ads.
 
Imagine cable subscribers who pay money to have ads broadcasted to their TVs. Can you imagine if cable TV is free with ads and those who pay can watch their programs interrupted? With that in mind, what Comcast is doing is not the worse out there.
 
I assume they're talking about ad's on mobile devices because it's very possible to have a desktop running on wifi if your're lucky enough to be slap bang in the middle of a wifi hotspot.
I don't understand why not everybody runs an ad blocking program like AdBlock on their systems unless they're masochists and love the torture. On mobile it's not so clear cut but there are some pretty effective ad blocking apps that can be sideloaded, it's what I did and it works.
 
I scan the system and it finds 31 ad sites cookies. It was a lot more. I have programmed the enterprise manage router to block out by IP these ad sites. I have another 31 more to ad. The same can be done in the HOST file but you would put the .adsitename.xxx in there to block them if you want to connect to any site using Comcast WiFi HotSpot.
 
As they say, free comes with an AD up your a$$. And according to the providers, it is not the worst-case scenario. Thank you sir, may I have another? Thank you sir, may I have another? Thank you sir, may I have another?
Fixed.
 
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