| It takes complaining to kill this stuff I work for a regional provider in the DC area and we were approached by Paxfire a few years ago. If you don't remember, they were the company that developed the SiteFinder "service" for Verisign. It's a different type of device/service that achieves the same end result.
After lengthy protests from all the techs at my company, we begrudgingly installed the device in-line with our DNS servers. While it worked fine and did the job, some users definitely noticed and within a hours, we received several complaints. These complaints were from very vocal, angry users. After receiving constant complaints from them over the course of our testing, we finally convinced management that it wasn't worth it and removed the box. Keep in mind that we had an OPT-OUT, but even after opting these users out, they still complained on principle. I'd have to say that I agreed with them 100%, as did many other people in our company.
I will agree that companies like Paxfire and NebuAD know how to market to the right people. They especially like to side-step the engineering departments and go straight to the top of the food chain, knowing that dangling dollar signs in front of the right folks will get them noticed. These products are great at what they do and there is nothing wrong with installing them as an OPT-IN ONLY service. However, throwing them onto a network without user's knowledge goes against the moral obligation of an ISP to provide INTERNET SERVICE - NOT ADS OR THE SALE OF CUSTOMER DATA.
Paxfire calls us every now and then to ask if we want to retry the test and purchase, but the right people learned their lesson and we tell them to pound sand. Nicely, of course. 
My advice to anyone who gets service on networks that deploy this technology is to complain and complain hard. Tell anyone else you know who uses the same service as you and get them to complain. Don't use FUD to spread the word - use the truth and explain the facts. I'm not sure if it will work 100% with large providers like Charter, but anyone with a lesser-known player can definitely rattle cages. |
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