I’m a client of Romania Data Systems home user branch. I use PPPoE to connect to their service. Yesterday I noticed that the first HTTP request made after connecting is redirected to an ad for their accompanying phone service. After throwing a fit and going off on a rant about violation of privacy and abuse, I changed my DNS servers to another ISP’s, thinking that it was a DNS redirect. Well, it wasn’t, after reconnecting I still get the ad when I load the first page.
I tried complaining, but that didn’t do much. Some other clients filed a complaint with the Romanian equivalent of your Better Business Bureau, but everyone doubts this will have effect. I feel raped. 🙁
Could this even be legal? Take the following hypothesis: you connect to their service and type up their competitor’s URL, and their own phone service ad comes on. That CAN’T be honest advertising.
Anyway, wrapping this up, what should I do? Was thinking about buying a Relakks account and routing all my traffic through that. But paying extra isn’t really all that inviting to me. Changing ISPs also isn’t a real option as the ISPs here are an oligopoly, they divided up their turf and this is the only ISP that offers a decend broadband plan around where I live. And I fear this is only the beginning.UPDATE: Other connections DO work, it seems my not being able to SSH to an outside box was a one-time thing. But you can’t do any web browsing until you’ve seen their ad. Or at all, if you’ve got JavaScript disabled.
