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CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

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Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#151

Post by gameswithgo »

pwg wrote: post #4

And here we see the disconnect between what politicians say, and what they write into law. The bill's sponsor's response to the blog authors query: SB134 did not require that ...They were only required to notify customers of options via email or with an invoice. And here is the text of the statute that was written: (ii) A service provider may provide the notice described in Subsection (2)(b)(i): (A) by electronic com…

absent any law they would still be free to DNS hijack you and show you an ad. there is no law against that.

this law says you have to notify customers of a thing. century link then did so in a shady way, then claimed the law REQUIRED them to do it this way, which is not true.

why am I having to explain this?

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#152

Post by lettergram »

xahrepap wrote: post #94

CenturyLink is totally shady. My wife just yesterday spent a significant amount of time fixing our phone bill. She decided a couple months ago to upgrade to a "fixed" bill plan (apparently they've been raising our prices $10/mo every year for the last few years). This plan price won't change until we change the plan. It's bundled with their internet though, but my wife told them to not send the modem because we weren…

I had a similar issue with comcast. I sent back a modem I didn't need, took photos and even had a receipt. After around 8 hours of phone calls asking them to remove it from my bill and them giving me the run around. They continued to charge me and sent my bills to collections.

At collections, it continued like this for months, I sent photos, I even had a recording of a comcast manager saying "we shouldn't have billed you, and will remove the charge".

After 18 months of fighting this $300 charge and around 30 hours of debates... I just paid the bill

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#153

Post by gameswithgo »

ryanlol wrote: post #131
jay-anderson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing laws feels a bit like a monkey's paw. No matter how well written a law is they often have unintended consequences or are implemented manners that weren't imagined. I don't think the bill's author/sponsor is fully to blame (they aren't guiltless either). Centurylink certain did not have to implement this requirement in the way it was done. The most depressing aspect to this is the lack competition. The author…

>they aren't guiltless either How is the bill's author/sponsor at all to blame for centurylink doing this? They could just as well be doing this without the bill existing.

It isn't, but hackernews is full of people who have fully bought into the idea that all government things are bad.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#154

Post by mrdoops »

xahrepap wrote: post #94

CenturyLink is totally shady. My wife just yesterday spent a significant amount of time fixing our phone bill. She decided a couple months ago to upgrade to a "fixed" bill plan (apparently they've been raising our prices $10/mo every year for the last few years). This plan price won't change until we change the plan. It's bundled with their internet though, but my wife told them to not send the modem because we weren…

When municipal fiber started moving into Utah, CenturyLink was a big offender of paying off local authorities to restrict and limit deployment. Lots of cities and areas didn't get upgraded for that reason. Less customers for fiber meant less customers to payback the investment - ends up costing everyone else more. CenturyLink is textbook rent-seeking behavior.

My advice to anyone moving into the Utah area is check the internet service provider options first. Last thing you want is to be in an area serviced only by CenturyLink.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#155

Post by RKearney »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #149

I use Xfinity. (It’s my only option for internet.) They would routinely inject crap into unencrypted HTTP webpages, bill notifications, adverts for antivirus, stuff like that. In the end I configured my (pfSense) router to forward all data on port 80 (and a small selection of other commonly unencrypted ports) through a VPN to a local VPS. Port 443 HTTPS is still allowed to connect directly. Makes me feel a lot better…

There's an RFC[0] for that

[0] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6108

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#156

Post by aplummer »

The comments here interesting but nuts for foreigners. I’m so used to a slight mention of an ombudsman being a 15 second turnaround to almost anything I ask for happening with ISPs / telcos. I worry about buying anything in the USA with such scant consumer protection.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#157

Post by iad »

freeopinion wrote: post #135
JohnFen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So, the fault here lies with the politician." No. The fault lies with CenturyLink. They're the ones who decided to implement this in the most repulsive way allowed by law. The law only required notification using normal communications methods, not disruption of services. CenturyLink is the one who chose disruption of services.

A big portion of fault lies with the consumer. If 20% of CenturyLink customers canceled their service for a week in a very publicized way, CenturyLink would scramble. For example, they could all wear yellow vests and block the entrance to the CenturyLink parking lot.

> If 20% of CenturyLink customers canceled their service for a week in a very publicized way, CenturyLink would scramble.

Their customers can't do that without incurring ridiculous early termination fees. And many of them don't have any other option for broadband anyway.

Further, I suspect boycotts very rarely work even against companies that aren't quasi-monopolies.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#159

Post by morpheuskafka »

dragonwriter wrote: post #20
pwg wrote: post #4

And here we see the disconnect between what politicians say, and what they write into law. The bill's sponsor's response to the blog authors query: SB134 did not require that ...They were only required to notify customers of options via email or with an invoice. And here is the text of the statute that was written: (ii) A service provider may provide the notice described in Subsection (2)(b)(i): (A) by electronic com…

> So, the fault here lies with the politician. I disagree: the claim by CenturyLink that this particularly intrusive, access blocking method is mandated is simply false. It's true that it is permitted by the state law (just as it would be permitted without any specific law on the topic at all), and even arguable that it is one means of complying with the law. (Though since the notification is not presented to some us…

Agree. While I think the law is silly an unneeded on the merits, I do have to agree with the lawmaker on this one. It's not like he made an exception to a law that banned notices, so "electronic communication" was perfectly fine.

What we need is a separate net neutrality law that bans all DNS hijacking and the like. Furthermore, it costs more for CenturyLink to set up DNS hijacking (unless of course they have bigger plans for it) than to quickly throw out a mass email or slip a note at the bottom of the next bill. So we all know this had nothing to do with compliance with the law.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#160

Post by walrus01 »

haasted wrote: post #27
walrus01 wrote: post #2

Senior network engineer for an mid sized ISP here: These people should be ashamed of themselves. I honestly don't care even the tiniest bit about whatever sort of excuses or justification they put up. It should not be necessary for a consumer end user (whether residential or business) of an ISP in the US or Canada to treat their ISP as hostile, and develop workarounds like VPN tunneling their traffic, such as I would…

Let’s not forget to include Belkin among the companies that have attempted variations of this. In this case, it was their wireless router which would grab a random out-going request and serve up advertisements instead. Imagine being in the middle of buying plane tickets and suddenly finding yourself at a random advertisement. https://www.geek.com/news/belkin-routers-misdirect-users-to-...

cheap router manufacturers have been doing dumb things for a long time:

http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~plonka/netgear-sntp/

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