They’ve been talking about doing it for a while, and now they’ve actually gone and done it. Charter is now monitoring its users’ browsing habits so that it can insert advertising into their browsers (ads that do not come from the site being viewed). It’s as if the phone company started monitoring your calls so they could play targeted advertisements while you’re on the line. Comcast also chooses what users can and cannot send (all for the good of their customers, of course).
Keep an eye on this one, folks. If Charter’s customers let it get away with this shit, you can bet other carriers will soon follow suit. Site designers might do well to follow Lauren Weinstein’s suggestion for pervasive encryption, just so users on the other end will know if the content they’re viewing has been tampered with.
