ISPs Inserting Ads Into Your Pages
Found on Slashdot on Friday, 22 June 2007
Some ISPs are resorting to a new tactic to increase revenue: inserting advertisements into web pages requested by their end users. They use a transparent web proxy (such as this one) to insert javascript and/or HTML with the ads into pages returned to users. Neither the content provides nor the end-users have been notified that this is taking place, and I'm sure that they weren't asked for permission either.
There is an interesting question: is this legal? I doubt so. Those ISPs use the content generated by others to make money. I doubt that IBM, Intel, Microsoft and all the others are happy when ads are placed on their sites. Especially since the average users won't assume that their ISP put them there. I see a lawsuit coming.