Friday, April 18, 2008

Are ISP's injecting ads into web pages viewed by their customers?

ISPs Meddled With Their Customers' Web Traffic, Study Finds
About one percent of the Web pages being delivered on the Internet are being changed in transit, sometimes in a harmful way, according to researchers at the University of Washington.

In a paper, set to be delivered Wednesday, the researchers document some troubling practices. In July and August they tested data sent to about 50,000 computers and discovered that a small number of Internet service providers (ISPs) were injecting ads into Web pages on their networks. They also found that some Web browsing and ad-blocking software was actually making Web surfing more dangerous by introducing security vulnerabilities into pages.

"The Web is a lot more wild than we originally expected," said Charles Reis , a PhD student at the University of Washington who co-authored the paper.


From a Internet user's point of view this really stinks. If you are a publisher, it is a very serious matter that someone is using your content to sell advertising and not compensating you.

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