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Opting Out of AT&T's 'Gigapower' Snooping is Comically Expensive

When AT&T first launched their 1 Gbps "Gigapower" service in Austin late last year in response to Google Fiber, the company's pricing raised a few eyebrows. In addition to the $350 ETF, installation and activation fees (which Google doesn't charge), AT&T was only willing to truly match Google's $70 pricing point if you agreed to opt in to the company's Internet Preferences, which goes beyond Google-esque snooping to use deep packet inspection to track each and every website you visit, and for how long.

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Originally, it was believed that it would cost users around $30 a month extra if they didn't want to be tracked by AT&T. But then GigaOM's Stacey Higginbotham penned a great report highlighting how it was actually substantially more than that. Higginbotham noted that not only did AT&T make the option very difficult to find, it would actually cost users between $49 and $60 per month to opt out of:
quote:
But the $29 more a month to keep your privacy isn’t actually $29 a month. As you add video service, the price differential between choosing privacy and letting AT&T snoop rose to $62 a month for an equivalent package and included a $49 one-time fee (see the screenshot below). Keeping your web history out of Ma Bell’s hands would have cost almost $800 the first year you signed up at the high-end and $531 at the low-end of ordering only internet.
Some have tried to argue that what AT&T's doing is a good thing, a narrative somewhat deflated by the fact AT&T tries to hide the option. There's also really not much transparency here -- AT&T refuses to say precisely what technology they're using to do the tracking, and there's really no way to confirm the company is respecting opt out requests. Meanwhile, people seem to quickly forget this is precisely the kind of snoopvertising companies like NebuAD were destroyed by lawsuits over.

In a new piece riffing off of Higginbotham's findings, Ars Technica's Jon Brodkin talks to a number of privacy advocates and security researchers, most of whom are alarmed by the precedent AT&T is setting:
quote:
“We're down to a fairly limited number of ISPs in the US anyway, and there's not been a good track record of those large providers like Comcast and AT&T, so I think a lot of the skepticism is warranted, and I think a lot of the burden is on them to show that they are honoring their privacy policies," (Security researcher Kenneth) White said. "Some of us think the idea of monetizing ad profiles for consumer ISPs is just unfathomable in the first place… but if there is a tier where they claim there are privacy enhancements and [it's] less invasive, the security community and privacy community are going to be looking very closely at those claims to make sure they're as stated."
Of course since Gigapower is a limited deployment targeting high-end developments and Google Fiber neighborhoods, users will often have the choice to switch to another ISP (which may or may not implement something similar). That won't be the case should AT&T decide to expand the program for all DSL and U-Verse users, who may not have the ability to vote with their wallet.

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decifal7
join:2007-03-10
Bon Aqua, TN

4 recommendations

decifal7

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who

Who says they will actually honor it as well?