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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

#271

Post by auslander »

gmac wrote: post #270
auslander wrote: post #269

Always on VPN on all your devices is pretty much a must today. Added benefit when using commercial VPNs is hiding your IP address, a key feature for tracking you by Adtech industry. Finding good VPN provider is tricky though. Definitely avoid free ones. Look for ones providing configuration for native VPN clients, like profile.mobileconfig file for the native iOS / MacOS IKEv2 client. Using native (OS supplied) clien…

Depending on what you're trying to achieve, running your own can be a good and simple option: https://github.com/jawj/IKEv2-setup https://github.com/trailofbits/algo

> running your own can be a good and simple option

+ trusted vpn

- unique IP that only you use, bad for tracking. Your searches and browsing history is linked easily to you.

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

#272

Post by rhexs »

hopler wrote: post #233
warent wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just take the CEO to small claims court for the maximum amount in your area (usually $5000-$10000) for the charge + punitive. Some states make it so you can't have a lawyer represent you in small claims court, and since Centurylink does business in your area then the person you served (i.e. the chief executive) would have to show up in person. That's basically what I did with a shady property management com…

That seems absurd 1. If you sue the company, any non lawyer rep can show up. 2. If you can sue the CEO over a corporate matter to force a settlement, why isn't everyone suing every rich person over everything?

I think in some states they can appeal from small-claims to non-small-claims court then you have to get a lawyer. Obviously a super pro-corporate court system.

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

#273

Post by anticensor »

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…

Which mid-sized Turkish ISP do you work at? Netspeed or TÜRK.net?

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

#274

Post by anticensor »

jstarfish wrote: post #60
jrnichols wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the feeling they wouldn't get much past the overly scripted front line service, unfortunately.

I keep telling myself that one day when some company run this way does me wrong enough, I'm going to go score a pile of Adderall, some cell phones and a pack of Depends and patiently battle/harass my way through the entire scripted management hierarchy until the CEO himself gets on the phone, personally apologizes for the mishap and invites me to his birthday party.

Excessive amphetamine-group intake would cause permanent brain damage.

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

#275

Post by tptacek »

jeroenhd wrote: post #32
zapdrive wrote: post #28

So what happens if a CenturyLink customer is not using their DNS, and using for example Google's DNS. They will suddenly have their internet disabled and will never see this page, where they have to click "OK" to reconnect their internet.

They will probably forward all DNS traffic to their own resolvers by just changing the destination IP of any UDP traffic to port 53. This won't work with DNSSEC or encrypted DNS though.

It'll work just fine with DNSSEC for the overwhelming majority of sites on the Internet, since virtually none of them are signed and DNSSEC doesn't actually encrypt traffic.

Encrypted DNS, though, like DoH or DNS-over-TLS or DNSCrypt, stops this cold.

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

#276

Post by elliekelly »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #266
illumin8 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quickest way to resolve all of these billing shenanigans: file a consumer complaint with the FCC. Magically, you'll almost immediately get a phone call from someone fairly high up in the company (typically executive relations or similar) that has the power to fix things and will make it right. The sad truth is that these telcos will systematically screw millions of customers with shady fees and fraudulent billing…

Free market only works when there is a choice. If there is only one provider available then regulation is necessary to avoid exorbitant fees.

We don't even need regulation. We just need the DOJ to actually enforce the Sherman Act.

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

#277

Post by ddunkin »

ams6110 wrote: post #221
bitsnbytes wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The quickest way to resolve all of these billing shenanigans: file a consumer complaint with the FCC" This , I had to do this with Comcast because of their craptastic service ,BS, and invalid billing. Trying to cancel them I kept being passed around to ALL the wrong people and departments, hung up on, refusal to give confirmation that the service was actually cancelled. Finally figured the only way they would cancel…

Another way to deal with Comcast is to go in to their local customer service office. The people there are real, live in the same town, etc and generally can solve any issue and will do so with no BS. At least that's my experience. When I've tried dealing with someone in their call center, it's been much more frustrating.

It's more like the DMV, pick a number, sit in the large waiting area for 30 minutes, just to get someone who doesnt really want to be there either.

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

#278

Post by elliekelly »

anticensor wrote: post #265
patrickg_zill wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend who is in telecom told me that when talking to a prepaid calling card software company, one of the features was the ability to change by how much the prepaid calling card would overbill. For instance, you make a 12 minute, 5 second call (12.1 minutes with 6-second billing which means 60 seconds is billed in tenths of a minute) - the software records it as say, 12.6 minutes.

Do they not have call termination logs? I am saying that because service logs have to be accurate by law.

Do you have a source for this? I would love nothing more than for this to be true but I don't think it is. Could this be industry-specific?

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

#279

Post by al2o3cr »

hathawsh wrote: post #208

I'm not going to defend CenturyLink, but in the interest of attributing this mistake to incompetence rather than malice, I'd like to suggest how this might have happened. CenturyLink is a multi-state ISP and their generic system has limited ability to support state-specific policies. They have a well-developed system for creating state-specific packet processing rules, but they don't have a well-developed way to noti…

> CenturyLink should obviously have some way to add state-specific notifications to customers' bills.

If only there was some relevant piece of data, already required to ensure the bill reaches it's destination, that could help them determine which customers are in which states.

They know billing addresses, and service addresses. They just didn't care.

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

#280

Post by anoncoward111 »

elliekelly wrote: post #278
anticensor wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they not have call termination logs? I am saying that because service logs have to be accurate by law.

Do you have a source for this? I would love nothing more than for this to be true but I don't think it is. Could this be industry-specific?

Not sure about his industry but all of our calls are recorded in customer service and your verbal acceptance (allegedly) makes you liable for the debt.
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