Wireless Service Providers → [Bus. Ops] Are you an Wireless ISP looking for more revenue? Spa

This isn't spam..... or is it. Has anyone else got this email, The guys name seems familiar, has anyone tried it? Does it pay well?

Thoughts?

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See the Experience:

Simply put these IP addresses in for your primary and secondary DNS servers on your laptop, go to a web browser, type www.amazon.com into the address bar and hit enter.

Primary DNS: 50.57.99.138
Secondary DNS: 50.57.100.29

The experience you just had is exactly what your customers will experience.

You get paid for purchases made over your network from top affiliate partners.
Click here for more information on the program
Increase your Revenue and Profit in just a few easy steps with Cash4Trafik. Sit back, relax and make more money.

Brought to you by:
Solutions4ebiz
WISPsolutions.com
Cash4Trafik.com
877-666-ebiz (3249)

Can't find much online about them. According to a LinkedIn profile

»www.linkedin.com/pub/pat ··· /a03/931

"Responsible for Sales and Implementation of Imagestream Linux Routers, Azotel Billing/OSS, and Cash4Trafik, a product that pays commissions to ISPs when their customers shop online at any of over 1800 affiliate retailers."

Perhaps someone should invite Patrick to come discuss their WISP solution with us. I would be interested in seeing a list of the affiliate retailers as well as exactly how their service works. If it's not a scam then why is there no online information available other than a sales pitch?

[edit] Looks like they are selling or reselling Aspira Networks product

»www.aspiranetworks.com/

Just DNS poisoning

I tested it out, looks like it use forward.rewardfinds.com, which then uses some affiliate code.

»news.ycombinator.com/ite ··· =1970802

I doubt that it is dns poisoning.

One of the traditional ways for advertisers to track users is spyware. With this method they can track your IP address along with every website you have visited without installing anything on your PC.

They might be able to use a simple cookie to get around NAT issues.

They will probably sell targeted advertising which earns more than random ad delivery.

I've done business with Solutions 4Ebiz, even had lunch with some of them while I was getting Imagestream training.

I'm sketchy about that offering though. I don't like the offering though. I guess the idea of monkey'ing with customers DNS doesn't sit well with me.

I don't like the idea of another company scoping through my customers dns, but on the other hand i'm intrigued by the idea if I could find a way to control it on my end. Whenever someone else has a way of offering me money for something, I always ask, "why can't i do it myself" ...

It works just fine, and as advertised.

I seriously hope any isp running this puts it in their privacy policy that third party advertisers have access to what DNS names they resolve.

If you guy's don't your probably breaking the law. Customer has a right to know you have sold their piracy out.

I wonder if that could/should be extended to the use of other DNS services regardless of whether or not you derive revenue from it. I use Google DNS mainly because it is so much faster than my upstream provider's DNS. Does that mean I need to inform all of my hotspot users that Google is mining data from their internet use?

Maybe not now, but it opens up the possibility for it to happen.

Ive done a couple of "digs" through these two DNS servers, and they appear to be handing back legit records for some domains. e.g.

$ dig @50.57.99.138 www.google.com
 
...
;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.google.com.         211     IN      A       173.194.73.106
www.google.com.         211     IN      A       173.194.73.147
www.google.com.         211     IN      A       173.194.73.99
www.google.com.         211     IN      A       173.194.73.103
www.google.com.         211     IN      A       173.194.73.104
www.google.com.         211     IN      A       173.194.73.105
 

and

$ dig @50.57.99.138 www.microsoft.com
 
...
;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.microsoft.com.      704     IN      CNAME   toggle.www.ms.akadns.net.
toggle.www.ms.akadns.net. 31    IN      CNAME   g.www.ms.akadns.net.
g.www.ms.akadns.net.    31      IN      CNAME   lb1.www.ms.akadns.net.
lb1.www.ms.akadns.net.  124     IN      A       65.55.57.27
 

But if you dig at retailers, you get some different results:

$ dig @50.57.100.29 www.amazon.com
 
...
;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.amazon.com.         10800   IN      A       50.56.52.52
 

Versus my own resolver:

$ dig www.amazon.com
 
...
;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.amazon.com.         60      IN      A       176.32.98.166
 

Traceroute to 50.56.52.52 goes to rackspace, while 176.32.98.166 which belongs to Amazon naturally goes to their network.

Telnet to 50.56.52.52 and ask it for www.amazon.com and it gives you a redirect:

$ telnet 50.56.52.52 80
Trying 50.56.52.52...
Connected to 50.56.52.52.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.amazon.com
 
HTTP/1.0 302 Moved Temporarily
Server: Apache
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store
Date: Mon Jan  7 20:51:27 2013
Location: http://www.amazon.com/?mcenabled=1
Pragma: no-cache
Connection: Keep-Alive
Set-Cookie: m123gz23523bs=3; domain=www.amazon.com; path=/
Content-Length: 0
 

Ask it again for www.amazon.com with the path as /?mcenabled=1 and you get amazons webpage:

$ telnet 50.56.52.52 80
Trying 50.56.52.52...
Connected to 50.56.52.52.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /?mcenabled=1 HTTP/1.1
Host: www.amazon.com
 
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 20:42:33 GMT
...
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
 

Ask amazons own web server for www.amazon.com and it gives it straight up.

Im guessing they are running some kind of proxy server that is looking at what URLs you are browsing to on a retailers domains. Perhaps when you go through certain URLs to make purchases it is able to determine that you bought something, and associate some kind of credit with your account (based on you registering with them and letting them know your IP ranges.)

Pure speculation, but this has potential to be quite evil. MITM attacks with HTTPS capturing bank details??? With all of your DNS going through their servers, poisoning is not out of the question since you are relying on their security, what ever and how ever good it may be...

Also I dont like the way they are playing the whole "dont let others profit off your customers" line... What has a customers retail habits got to do with the operation of your network? This is what the net neutrality debate is all about right? Network operators snooping in on customer activity and looking to profit from it.

Well said!

It's my personal belief if you're going to leverage your customer's activity (e.g. viewing what they are doing) for profit, you have a responsibility to inform your customers of such. It might not be legally required, but it's the ethical thing to do.

I don't know of many consumers who would be comfortable with that type of business practice.

I totally agree. I would question the morality of using something like this as well as the legality. I would definitely consider it an intrusion into my customer's private affairs and not something I should be messing with as their "last mile" provider.

In terms of privacy, how do you know it's not happening currently with the dns servers you're currently using? I'm sure google is data mining the shit out of 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. I currently use open dns, but there's nothing saying they aren't an evil company either.

I would be worried about unknown companies, but really, how do you know who you can/can't trust?

There is nothing that is personally identifiable that is happening guys. It's not much more than a cookie for a session to a retailer. In essence, a session is established, it is marked by which ISP it came from, and that's it.

This has been happening for years via other means, and has been available to consumers for a long time.

All the parties involved are separated on purpose, so there isn't any identifiable means to the consumer.

We have no obligation to notify our customers, because we aren't selling their names, or anything personally identifiable to a third party. I don't even know what they are buying. Nor do I have access to it. So far everything has been done as per our agreement, and they have been great to work with.

If you don't like the idea, let someone else make money off of it instead LOL. I do like this idea better than targeted ads that pop up

Ugh. Just look at how the sales pitch is worded. SCAM SCAM SCAM. You can tell it's bad news right from the start.


There is nothing that is personally identifiable that is happening guys.


Perhaps with a small amount of effort it could identify you. You would be using the same DNS servers when you retrieved your email, right?

I run a smaller network and have been making use of this for about a year - It seems to work well - I've yet to have any dns issues with the customers and it pays. I agree with what some of the other guys on here are saying - I know for a fact Charter is doing things in the background. Basically it does as it says you get paid when end users make purchases at online sites that participate in the affliate system.

I'll try and clear this up just a little bit.
I have used this system both ways. You can have a proxy server (that they provide for free) that watches traffic. And in turn redirects traffic destined for their retailers. Or you can go the DNS route, which essentially does the same thing.

In either case, it doesn't care about the traffic destined any where other than the companies we both get paid from.

Why does it have to be a "scam" when it works. Just because you are skeptical, doesn't mean it's a scam. I get a check each month... Do you? My service isn't slowed down, or act funny when it's on. My customers (for the most part) don't care about it. So what's the problem?

I have referred a hand full of companies to use this system as well. I have no problem trying to explain it. Because, again, I get paid using it, AND I see no issues with it. Be it privacy, or anything else.

From what I understand, it logs an IP, and the retailer. A third party keeps track of the purchase totals so you get paid appropriately. From what I was told, it is simply advertising revenue that is reversed to the networks where the customer comes from. They are trying to track what areas of the country buy what and from where, and if the retailers advertising is working in that area. In turn we get a check.

It has averaged about $.50 per sub per month if it matters to any of you. Real money, for next to nothing on our end, or costs.

Because the definition of a scam is not "you get bent over a barrel and end up in the gutter", although that might be the stereotypical view of a scam - e.g. the person that loses all of their savings. A scam is simply something that is done "less honestly", lets put it that way.

I suppose the thing that irks me about this system is the irony, the massive blatant irony. Lets take one comment that really says it all:So, whos making profit out of your customers? The very guys who are telling you that you shouldnt be letting it happen!!!

How much are they making out of this compared to you?Except your soul.

No google is a trustworthy company if they did something really shady they would face legal action. I use googles dns for my third dns server as a forwarder as well. (First upstream, then level3, then google)

This DNS service is extra shady and its clear from the email that prairiesky received I sure wouldn't trust them.

Im starting to get the feeling many of you guy's don't even have a privacy policy or AUP and people here are just winging the whole being an internet service provider thing.

When the guy running this decides he has enough providers using his service and the amazon thing isn't making him enough and he rips off your customers through a fraudulent way way have fun explaining it to your customers.

edit: I just noticed your running a hot-spot, This isn't the same type of business.

What you guys CLEARLY miss is this is sponsored by the companies you are buying from online in the first place. It's NOT voodoo.

This has been available to individual customers via similar non-paid- for sponsored websites for a long time now.

Take the same model, and give it to an ISP, and you have something that makes money, without any risk.

We do have a privacy policy. It's very clear, and this doesn't break it one bit.

Now ask all the big ISP's what they are doing in the background with redirects for search engines. Pop up advertisements... Ask Google what they are going with their own ISP and it's advertisement revenues from their customers?...

You guys are clearly grasping at straws over something you don't understand, nor care to want to understand. I'll take my check and be perfectly happy with it, thanks.

Oh, we understand.

Just because the large ISPs are taking on similar measures to increase revenue, doesn't make it right.

This is not ALL internet traffic, Just traffic to the retailers involved in the affiliate program or whatever it is called. So the retailer is involved. The end user was going to that site anyway.

It doesnt matter anyway, if this wasnt going on, everyone would get the same ad when they go to any page that serves ads, so you are already part of this.

The reality is this is a service to the end user, the end user gets more targeted advertising. I would much prefer I get an ad about something I care about than say an ad for nickel plated shoe horns.

If this was injecting ads into a toolbar without consent that would be a different story and the conspiracy theorists here would be justified, but its just standard operating procedure, at least this way you know who is serving ads to your customer base.

Some of us understand it perfectly well. No need to be insulting.

I am not going to take sides on this particular issue. It is certainly possible that this company is not doing anything more evil than tracking sales and accumulating marketing data. What large and/or Internet retailer doesn't do that these days.

What does disturb me is the overall trend. Pressure from stockholders and rising operating costs tend to drive various companies further to the evil side in search of profit. The line that is drawn between a reasonable service and invasive data mining for something new to sell becomes fluid and moveable.

Facebook is just one example. It appears that outrageous Terms of Service are not really defeated, they just take longer to implement. The new phrase "You are the product" seems here to stay.

Except I'm some how selling my soul by making money.. That's alright though?

I would say bburley has it the most accurate. We are getting paid by allowing the retailer to gather marketing data from our customers. NOT, sell them more, via pop up ads. Not sending them to web sites they don't or didn't want to go to in the first place.

The premise is sound. It's sponsored by the retailer the customer is using anyway. And it doesn't violate any kind of privacy act in any way, because we aren't allowing anyone access to personal information. Only the company who already knows about the purchase (since you are buying from them any way) knows anything personal about you and/or your purchase. AND, it can be bypassed if someone doesn't like it by changing DNS servers on their PC.

I feel you are missing the point. You're operating a private network, right? Your customers are leasing access on this said network. These customers assume the traffic traveling over your network is only being monitored/accessed by you as an ISP.

The minute you start allowing 3rd parties to have access to customer data traveling over your network, it opens the door to other things.

I guess we view the role of an ISP differently. I personally believe an ISPs role is to provide their customers with access to the internet and maintaining exactly that. It would be the same as a phone provider allowing 3rd parties to gain access to information of your phone usage. It doesn't sit right with me, I wouldn't do it to my own customers.

That's simply my opinion on the matter. While you may disagree, I would imagine some of your customers would side with my viewpoint.

When I said I wasn't going to take sides, I meant that I wasn't going to declare this particular company any more evil than what it says it is doing.

But I do agree with BlueC, and I would not attach this type of company to the network that I look after.

Gunther your privacy policy (»www.wirelessdatanet.net/ ··· acy.html) makes no mention of you using a third party advertising company (Cash4Trafik) for DNS.

I feel this is something you should tell your customers/future customers. Even if you just make it so if they want to opt out tell them to use a third party DNS service such as level3's (4.2.2.4) or googles (8.8.8.8).

You owe it to your customers to be up front with them about your policy's.

And my policy is NOT going to say anything about it, because we aren't giving out any personal information about our customers. Does your policy tell all of your customers that they are getting screwed by Google every time they type "google"? No it doesn't, does it.