wtf? wlan ap on bus travels, they are recording net traffic

[___]

I have to vent quickly before I explode. I am traveling a lot by bus as of late. a rather new company has made it possible to cheaply get to places in Germany, rather than having to rely on trains.


"mein fern bus", I am sure Germans know this company quite well. They actually offer free wlan on the bus rides, which is quite convenient. obviously using a public ap is a security risk. well, before you can log in, you need to agree to their terms and conditions. I was like TL;DR and just clicked connect when I was prompted to enter my email address in order to login. I used a fake email address and was able to start a git clone but was disconnected after a while, with a message informing me that I had used up my datavolume. I changed my network adapter and logged back in, gave another fake email and was disconnected again after about 15min. then I read the terms and conditions to find out what the data volume allows is.


turns out, there is no limit! but you actually agree for them to record all data traffic and email addresses that they use at their discretion and even pass on to third parties! they will refrain from doing so if the customer objects explicitly against this in written form. so yeah, I wrote an angry email.


what the fuck are these dickheads thinking? I know almost all companies are doing it nowadays. how are we supposed to protect ourselves from this? this reminds me of the conversation with wizardstan in the pyra privacy thread.


I wish there was a botnet dedicated to counterspam. at least these assholes would get a little bit of their own medicine this way. just bombard every stupid company that forces their marketing analysis shit on us with fake customer service forms and the likes. actually thought about starting something like this with paper spam. I am annoyed enough by idiots dropping fake letters "to whom it may concern" with cellphone offers and other ads. waste of paper and time. these people should be fined. literature is mostly being printed on recycled paper, while these morons waste expensive and toxic ink and stuff our mailboxes full of shit.

 

[ElPoco]

Use TOR and encrypt.

 

[pmprog]

what the fuck are these dickheads thinking? I know almost all companies are doing it nowadays. how are we supposed to protect ourselves from this? this reminds me of the conversation with wizardstan in the pyra privacy thread.

"What are they thinking?" and "Almost all companies are doing it nowadays"... well, they're thinking "We want to be the same".


But sarcasm aside, you protect yourself by not using "free" public wifi spots. I don't know what else you'd expect from a "free" service... sure, if you paid a subscription and they did that, I could understand your frustration, but it's not.

 

[___]

yeah obviously this is a general problem and I am sure what they do is fully legal. But I am getting sick of this. And it's not a free service like in some public place, I paid for the ticket and wanted to work on the bus which was made impossible. They are advertising that they are providing wifi and not that they are providing wifi while recording everything, this you only find out once you have already paid.


I am not going to justify my rage, this is a rant anyway. I'll still use their bus service because I do not have enough money to take the train everywhere but doesn't it piss you off as well, that everybody feels entitled to listen in on your network traffic all the time? Also: I am pretty sure that wifi providers where you have to pay for access do the same recording and monitoring.

 

[levi]

Use starttls to stop them scraping every email address you send.  Hiding web servers you talk to is trickier, but doable with VLANs and things.


If they're caching *all* data you send through them, then yeah, bombarding them with nonsense seems to only sensible thing to do.  Write an app so everyone can do it.

 

[pmprog]

yeah obviously this is a general problem and I am sure what they do is fully legal. But I am getting sick of this. And it's not a free service like in some public place, I paid for the ticket and wanted to work on the bus which was made impossible. They are advertising that they are providing wifi and not that they are providing wifi while recording everything, this you only find out once you have already paid.


I am not going to justify my rage, this is a rant anyway. I'll still use their bus service because I do not have enough money to take the train everywhere but doesn't it piss you off as well, that everybody feels entitled to listen in on your network traffic all the time? Also: I am pretty sure that wifi providers where you have to pay for access do the same recording and monitoring.

I'm not saying I disagree with your sentiment, I'm just telling it like it is...


You say you've already paid - but you've paid for the bus ticket to take you places, you haven't paid for the WiFi because you said the WiFi was "free" (presumably to bus customers), and that gets back to what "free" entails.


You're bothered about them reading all your data (rightly so), but you can always buy a 3G dongle and use mobile networks instead.


Bombarding them with nonsense will not "fix" the issue, if anything, they'll get fed up of the network abuse and revoke it, leaving you with no "free" wifi.


So yes, I agree with you on one hand, but you get what you pay for. Don't like it? shop somewhere else. If everyone only shopped in the good spots, the bad ones would wither and die. It's economics

 

[Christoph.Krn]

Fun fact: If you are in Germany, put a "No ads" sticker on your mailbox. Companies have to respect that sticker for advertising that doesn't have your address on it. If they don't, call them. For advertising that does have your address on them, see here: https://www.asta.tu-darmstadt.de/asta/de/aktuelles/2013-05-19-adressierte-werbung-dauerhaft-verhindern


About the bus internet thing, contact your Verbraucherzentrale! These are the things that they're there for. I'd be curious to hear what they say about this.

 

[___]

I have never seen the "No ads" sticker work anywhere. Is this true? I know of many people who have these on their mailboxes, but noone seems to enforce it by calling the companies and telling them to stop delivering crap spam. Is there actually a law or something you can point me to that I can refer to and not make an ass of myself?


EDIT: Wait... how did I miss that link? thanks!


EDIT2: Yeah that's not really what I am talking about. This is for mail that is actually addressed to you not those "to whom it may concern", "an die hausbewohner" type fake letters. Also the procedure described in that link is so tedious, I doubt it's happening a lot that people go through with it. You have to give them 6 weeks to prove where they aquired your personal address etc. Way too long if you are bombarded with crap mail daily. And most of the as I said doesn't fall under that category as it's non personalized.


And about the bus thing: It frustrates the hell out of me but I believe it is like pmprog is saying, they are doing something fully legal. I just find it annoying and shady, but that's my problem I guess. More of a moral outrage and general displeasure with the way these things seem to work nowadays. I never handed out my email address to shady advertisement people on the streets in the early 2000s when they were running around trying to give free samples. The thing is, today I am asked for my data and still annoyed with ads all at the same time everyhwere! Just waiting for someone to invent a machine that implements ads into our dreams and analyzes our deepest desires for product oriented marketing...

 

[Christoph.Krn]

More information on no ads stickers and the Robinsonliste: http://www.verbraucherzentrale-sachsen.de/bitte-keine-werbung-einwerfen-. I have such a sticker, and I don't get advertising letters anymore.


And really, you should contact a Verbraucherzentrale, there's no reason not to. At least tell them about it so that they know. If you're not convinced that you should contact them, then please read ALL of this: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datensparsamkeit_und_Datenvermeidung

 

[Neelix]

FWIW I've actually done the legwork, stuffing mailboxes with that kind of junk mail several years ago.   I always honoured the "No Junk Mail" signs if people used them, and was instructed to do so.   It was no skin off my nose, If I saw one I just moved on to the next house.  As long as the sticker is clearly visible there is no reason not to honour it.


-Neelix

 

[Wally]

I always give these things false email addresses.. the poor guy that owns bobsaget@gmail.com really would be getting spam galore

 

[levi]

Tsk, use mailinator or any other site that's designed as a spam honeypot.  Plus, if you use it for site logons and you ever do need to reset your password, you still can provided you remembered that mailinator address.


Unfortunately, a number of sites disallow mailinator addresses as being valid, but there are a number of third party MX records that point at the mailinator servers.  Unfortunately, the mailinator site used to tell you about random ones on its main page, but a site redesign a year or two back mucked that up, so these days you have to search through old blog posts and double check it's still valid by reading the MX record via a DNS lookup.

 

[Alperoot]

Did you tried Privatoria? It's Tor + VPN. Also, never connect to a public APN. Your connection can be easily intercepted by another person (really, you can actually do this from a Pandora).

 

[klapse]

Nice to see that the trains are getting competition. If you don't like the free WLAN service, don't use it.  The tracking is used to shield themselves from legal liability if someone does something bad with their internet connection.