Hotel Connectivity Provider SuperClick Tracks You

saccade.com writes "During my last hotel stay, I thought it was a pretty strange that it took two browser re-directs before the hotel's Wi-Fi would show me the web page I browsed to. Picasa developer Michael Herf noticed the same the thing and dug a little deeper. He discovered: '...their page does some tracking of each new page you visit in your browser, outside what a normal proxy (which would have access to all your cookies and other information it shouldn't have, anyway) would do. This "adlog" hit appears to also track a "hotel ID" and some other data that identifies you more directly. Notably, I've observed these guys tracking HTTPS URLs, and of course you can't track those through a proxy.' Herf notes the Internet service provider, SuperClick, advertises that it 'allows hoteliers and conference center managers to leverage the investment they have made in their IP infrastructure to create advertising revenue, deliver targeted marketing and brand messages to guests and users on their network...'" Herf was on his honeymoon when he did this sleuthing. Now that's dedication.

I did a little "sleuthing" on my honeymoon

[Gothmolly (148874)]

But it involved chocolate sauce, melted wax, and soft restraints. What is this 'Herf' person thinking, signing onto his laptop while on honeymoon? Go get laid you nerd!

Re:

[Joebert (946227)]

Cut the guy some slack, he was probably getting ready to print out some diagrams.
You know how the net is, distractions everywhere !

Not so fast..

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

What is this 'Herf' person thinking, signing onto his laptop while on honeymoon?

Well, maybe he was logging onto Picasa to do some uploading...?

Putty w/ dynamic proxy support and an SSH server.

[tgd (2822)]

If you've got the resources to run an SSH server at home, use Putty with a dynamic proxy and point your browser and IM clients to it via SOCKS5.

I wouldn't trust any network like that... even if the service itself isn't watching what you're doing, do you trust the other people on that network aren't?

Its easy to surf or do other network apps safely on questionable networks. At least among the Slashdot crowd its easy... but I've educated even my parents on doing that when using public or hotel internet and gave them an SSH account to use at my house.

OpenVPN

[Shawn is an Asshole (845769)]

Or just use OpenVPN. I use this on my laptop. Set it as the default route, use the internal DNS and your good to go. I also use an internal proxy server. So when I'm at a coffee shop or hotel doing some work, the only thing they get to see is encrypted traffic to port 1194 (udp).

Over that connection I can do anything. Instant messaging, email, SSH, http, ftp, BitTorrent, etc.

OpenVPN uses SSL

[SIGBUS (8236)]

Note that OpenVPN can be set up to use a TCP connection instead of a UDP connection, and it uses SSL. No need for weird things like GRE that might not make it through.

You could always put OpenVPN on a port other than 1194 if you think you might run into port blocking, too.

The wise man assumes

[Silver Sloth (770927)]

that nowadays all his actions are watched and recorded. I live in the UK, which, I believe, has the highest ratio of CCTV cameras per head of population in the world. To me it's no surprise that when I log in at the Marriot I'm watched. Fortunately the first thing I do is establish a VPN tunnel to my company's network where I'm being watched by the CIO.

Further than that, welcome to the modern world, cue the cliches (1984, quis custodiet, ...)

Re:The wise man assumes

[Billosaur (927319)]

Face it, your ISP is even watching you, noting your bandwidth usage, logging where you go, reading your email to make sure it's not spam, etc. The fact is, any transaction that occurs on the Internet is being logged on a server somewhere, and someone has access to that information. If you're lucky, it's just a sysadmin making sure you don't go over some quota, but you have no way of truly knowing. A true paranoic wouldn't use the Internet at all.

Re:The wise man assumes

[BVis (267028)]

Because some of us still care about our privacy; we also think "If you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about" is just about the most offensive thing we could think of.

I just don't think it's anyone's business what books I'm buying, or what threads I'm posting to, or if I look up some rash on WebMD, or talk to my wife on IRC, etc etc. I'm not about to give up my privacy for some corporate bullet point about "leveraging marketing assets." They want that info, they can bloody well ask me.

Re:

[somersault (912633)]

I just don't get why its so offensive, and what I perceive to be the whole american "I'd rather die than lose my 'freedom'" type attitude. Especially considering the way the american government is acting with things like the Patriot Act, etc, americans seem to be less free than the rest of the western world.

You're obviously right though that corporations don't deserve to see into your private life and conversations just so that they can target marketing towards you (though I'd prefer to have marketing I

Re:

[CantStopDancing (1036410)]

I just don't think it's anyone's business

The problem is that it is exactly that - business! While you have money to spend someone will *always* be looking at what you're doing, and trying to convince you to give them some of that luvverly moneys.

You mean you didn't suspect this automatically?

[davmoo (63521)]

You mean to tell me that Slashdotters, some of the most paranoid people on the planet, didn't just automatically assume hotels did crap like this on their networks to make extra money? Are people here that damned naive? The story that would be news would be a hotel that does *not* do this.

Any time I use a network that isn't my own, be it a hotel, restaurant, or even the public library, I just automatically assume that someone who wants to remain unknown is taking an active interest in what I'm doing. Otherwise, why would any of these places provide free networking in the first place. They aren't doing it out of the goodness of their heart and so they can sleep warm and cuddly at night. They're doing it because they've found other ways to make a buck off of it.

Re:You mean you didn't suspect this automatically?

[node 3 (115640)]

The story that would be news would be a hotel that does *not* do this.

No. This is news because it's excessive and uncommon.

Otherwise, why would any of these places provide free networking in the first place. They aren't doing it out of the goodness of their heart and so they can sleep warm and cuddly at night. They're doing it because they've found other ways to make a buck off of it.

Not everyone is so obsessed with money as you seem to think. Some people, even astute businesspeople, make decisions based on things like, "doing what's right", "giving back to the community", and "providing quality and value". I highly doubt that your average coffee-shop free WiFi is snooping on you.

Such extreme cynicism (as you seem to be promoting) is detrimental to society, and makes for a poor foundation to live by.

Not as stupid as others seem to think

[pdawson (89236)]

FTFA:

It turns out that Lorna and I both noticed and both got upset about it, so I'm spending a (small) amount of time figuring out how this thing works and what it's after. After all, I'm still on my honeymoon.

He's on his honeymoon, but looks like he was lucky enough to marry another geek, so its all good

Re:

[DoctorPepper (92269)]

Some of us are lucky, some no so much.

I had the great fortune to also marry another geek. She's not so much of a computer geek, like me, she's more of a science geek (also like me) and a mathematics geek.

She also thinks my two great hobbies, computers and ham radio, are "cute", and allows me to spend inordinate amounts of money on them ;-)

I've assumed that this was the case....

[8127972 (73495)]

.... for years. That's why I've begun to use a remote access product called the MobiKEY [route1.com]. It is a USB token that creates an SSL tunnel with 2 factor authentication (some sort of PKI based scheme) to your home/work computer. The company that makes this has a managed service called MobiNET that helps to broker the connection so that even Joe Sixpack can connect anywhere there is a net connection. Also, since it's SSL, I don't have to change my firewall settings.

By using this product, nobody can snoop on my activities and I can do what I have to do in complete confidence. Problem solved.

They do, do they ?

[Joebert (946227)]

Are theese guys based in Soviet Russia by any chance ?

pardon?

[rucs_hack (784150)]

On his honeymoon?

wow, that's a relationship with a good start.

In soviet Russia...

[Zaatxe (939368)]

Hotel Connectivity Provider SuperClick Tracks You!

Oh, wait...

Some? How about "most"?

[Svartalf (2997)]

They're intercepting all of the SMTP traffic outbound ostensibly to prevent spammers from renting a room for the night and using their "high-speed" access to cover their tracks. Since my SMTP server can use the alternate authenticated (and SSL encrypted) ports, they're not dinking with my email right at the moment- either way. Their little mail proxy engine is like an open relay and gets rejected by other mailservers if they've got those sorts of countermeasures on. I'd sent some emails to my friends and

Re:Some hotels intercept SMTP traffic too

[Alpha232 (922118)]

I won't try to claim there is no evil in this instance...
However there are some providers that do the same type of thing with the genuine interest in helping the guest.

This is NOT uncommon; this is all about providing transparent network services. There are systems already out there (STSN, et.al.) that don't even require you to use DHCP.. If your IP is static, it handles the masquerading needed to make it work without your intervention, same for DNS and Mail.

Take for instance your mom and pop traveler, they are setup for cable broadband, their ISP comes to their home and hard wires the DNS and SMTP settings, and sometimes the IP. Mom and Pop go on vacation and bring their laptop, yes Virginia some non-geeks/non-business people own laptops. What settings do they need to know how to change in order to get online? At a minimum their IP is hopefully DHCP but I'll say that is not always the case, and also DNS which would be set by DHCP unless their IP or DNS settings are hard coded. In this case, the system would see the system using an IP that isn't part of the hotel network and wasn't assigned by the server, so it will do what is needed to make that IP work. Same thing goes for DNS, it will route all DNS requests to its internal DNS server, and sometimes ISP's don't allow public access from the outside.

As far as SMTP is concerned, would you be surprised that in this age of rampant spam that Mom and Pops ISP refuse connections from outside their network? Also in a growing trend, the ISP the hotel uses wants some assurances that the public access isn't allowing mass spamming. In this case the hotel(or their network provider) routes all SMTP traffic to one server on their network which queues it and sends it out. They could be doing spam checks or simply a queue threshold/throttle to limit the damage Mom and Pops zombified laptop can do.

That last point is also my last point, from the Hotel/ISP point of view you're using a computer that is not controlled by the person who owns the network. Most companies do not allow unsecured systems on their network, in a hotel, that is the idea... so measures must be taken to not only have the network adapt to the user but also to protect the host from their guests.

Probably went something like:

[DJCacophony (832334)]

"What? This security dialog box is warning me that this certificate is unsigned! Better click 'ok' so I can see my bank account anyways."

Re:A true nerd

[Intron (870560)]

Honey. I thought you said you were getting me pearls and rubies?

Re:A true nerd

[Your Pal Dave (33229)]

You call that a python?

Re:A true nerd

[Gzip Christ (683175)]

A true nerd would consummate his marriage while surfing on the internet and maybe writing some code while he was at it.

I tried to do that, but there's not much else you can do when you're in the middle of a really long fsck.