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

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!

Not so fast..

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

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

Double Dipping

Well, I was going to make a snide remark about how they spent their honeymoon, but I really like Picasa, so I refrained.

However, I remember this happening the last time I stayed in a hotel (a Hilton Garden). At least I kept getting redirected. I am more than a little miffed that hotels are charging me *and* spying on me.

Next time I will use the VPN.

A true nerd

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

Re:A true nerd

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

Re:A true nerd

You call that a python?

Re:A true nerd

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.

Putty w/ dynamic proxy support and an SSH server.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I've always worried about this...

...which is why I only get online using my corporate VPN, and never visited any sites that required a login (banking, blog, yadda yadda).

Of course that's assuming the VPN is secure enough...i'm sure there's a way around everything. Hell, just connecting to the WiFi and checking your email can give anyone your password if they have half a brain.

You mean you didn't suspect this automatically?

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?

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-quite-honey Moon

It's not dedication, just means he's not particularly enthusiastic about his honeymoon.

I call bullshit

Herf was on his honeymoon when he did this sleuthing. Now that's dedication.

Come one. This is slashdot. More like "Herf was taking a break from a month-long WoW session in his parents' basement when he did the sleuthing."

Like we'd buy that someone here even *knew* a girl, much less got married or went on a honeymoon!

Not as stupid as others seem to think

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

https urls?

How do they do that? From what I understood all that a man in the middle could see was the host ip address as everything else is authenticated/encrypted. Or else you would get a security warning upon visiting the page.

Superclick or Superchick

Am I the only one who read "Hotel Connectivity Provider SuperChick Tracks You". I thought "why on earth would a CCM rock band be working for a hotel?"

Obligitory

In Corporate America, hotel tracks you!

1. Install wifi network
2. track wifi users' net traffic
3. ...
4. Profit!

Dedication

Herf was on his honeymoon when he did this sleuthing. Now that's dedication.

To whom?

A disturbing trend

Unfortunately, this is only going to become more widespread. Hotel chains are only interested in profit, and running their own in-house ISP just isn't profitable. They will contract out whereever possible, and for the lowest price.

Superclick already has the backing of major Hotel chains, so it already has recognition in the marketplace (hotel owners). That is not going to change. They would also be very competitive for the services they provide and, given what has been found, it is not unreasonable to think that they are cheaper because they sell off the information they gather to marketing companies.

I cannot see this kind of tracking coming to an end until either the mainstream media make a story out of it, or someone sues the Hotel chain for breaching their privacy (or both).

Some hotels intercept SMTP traffic too

I noticed some hotels intercept SMTP traffic after a client complained he couldn't send email through our mail server while he was on the road. The hotel's service provider was trying to masquerade as our mail server and attempting to intercept the mail delivery. When I tested it I sent a test message through the mail server that was representing itself as our mail server and received the message 12 hours later. Interesting that it took that long to deliver the message and surprising that they would try to intercept messages and authentication information in this fashion. If I remember correctly, this was the Hilton in Chicago. I can't remember the name of the organization that was providing the service for the hotel.

Re:Some hotels intercept SMTP traffic too

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.

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

.... 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 ?

Are theese guys based in Soviet Russia by any chance ?

pardon?

On his honeymoon?

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

HTTPS tracking

>>Notably, I've observed these guys tracking HTTPS URLs, and of course you can't track those through a proxy.

Um, yes, you can. It is possible with todays hardware.

Here are a few;
http://www.esafe.com/eSafe/traffic_solutions.asp [esafe.com]

Another;
http://www.scmagazine.com/us/products/productdetai ls/94de9e89-b7a1-6d6f-9479-84b866a2ffab/webwasher- 1000-csm-appliance/ [scmagazine.com]
http://www.cyberguard.com/products/webwasher/webwa sher_products/csm_appliance/index.html?lang=de_EN [cyberguard.com]
"WW1000 has the ability to scan encrypted SSL"

The days of HTTPS being valuable are long gone. We can look inside this traffic realtime. I monitor & block traffic to HTTPS sites myself..

FreeNX

I use FreeNX to go back to my home desktop through a ssh tunnel. I use the local desktop only if I want some multimedia -- I'll start streaming a radio station, then pull up my home desktop, etc.

FreeNX is fast enough to make this viable.

You get a lot of advantages from doing it this way. There's the privacy angle, which is a big thing. But you also get your main desktop -- the one with all of your stuff on it.

And you don't need a really fast laptop. Once it's fast enough to run FreeNX, you're ok. I use a thinkpad I bought on ebay for $200. It's not just cheap, it's from the era when laptops ran cool enough to actually hold on your lap.

Not all hotels are like this.

I find it somewhat strange/funny that the majority of hotels having these systems in place seem to be the "expensive" ones. Marriott, Hilton, etc..

From my experience (a few different positions) in the hotel industry, the less expensive hotels (Econolodge, Travelodge, Red Roof, etc..) typically don't have these tracking systems. The downside is that their networks are usually less secure, because many don't have any sort of authentication outside of a WEP/WPA key. The tracking systems aren't found at these hotels because of the high setup costs (usually in the $1,000-3,000 range) and fees. It's not cost effective for the rates charged at these places, so they often end up with some sort of homebrew solution (kind of like the one I set up at a place -- used WRT54Gs authenticating to a FreeRADIUS server) which is less expensive to set up, and ends up being less expensive in the long run by only having to pay for a separate Cable/DSL connection. As previously stated, the downside here is security most of the time.

It really turns into a pick your poison-type situation. Regardless, I'd go along with the VPN/SSH Tunnel mentality. You never know what that front desk worker is doing downstairs in their free time.. *grin*

Whorehousing

As a former employee of a hotel service provider, we would certainly store MAC addresses indefinitely, proxy (and occasionally read) outgoing email (and deny SMTP service for the flimsiest of pretexts), and best of all, t2 support would often tail the squid logs in search of the best pr0n. If the company had been in any way organised you can bet we'd have been selling (aggregate only! honest!) data to the first bidder.

And don't even get me started on the plan to introduce targetted ads direct to the browser on *every page*. What? you think we used squid for performance?

Hotels want to know EVERYTHING

I work for a certain hotel company, I'm the person who you get when you call to make a reservation. If you have any kind of identifying profile or number, then you're activity is being tracked. Whether you stayed on business or pleasure, who you're companion was, what floor you like, how many beds, on what occasion you decided to stay at the hotel...any information i can gather about you, i am paid to gather. We use an integrated soft phone that is linked with our reservations system. I know what number you are calling from. If you have stayed with us before, chances are you have a profile, and i have your address, credit card number, and possibly how many kids you have. The hotels want your business so badly, they want to REALLY get to know you, and have your favorite flower on the bed when you come in, or if you know the concierge well enough, your favorite escort. So if you want to keep you're personal info "secret", don't earn points towards that free stay, and don't get a profile number. We get paid extra for making these profiles, so watch out for people just making you one, without your expressed consent. It happens all of the time. i watch it happen everyday. I'm looking for a new job.

In soviet Russia...

Hotel Connectivity Provider SuperClick Tracks You!

Oh, wait...

Fight Back . . .

In light of this information, it is obviously the duty of every red-blooded geek to fight back by stealing free porn [lockergnome.com] from any hotel which uses this system.

Worry;

This was my worry in all the activity to provide municipal wireless around the country.

Our tax dollars are going to build out networks that are going to be used, in this fashion, to track our activities - probably as a revenue source, by selling our personal information to advertisers (or worse).

And then, the whole shebang will be sold to a monopolist for pennies on the dollar by crooked politicians.

Other than that, I think municipal wireless is a great idea. . .

Give the guy a break.

Maybe he married a geek/nerd from the opposite sex and they just checked things out together... In that case: better then sex. :)

I've seen worse

I've stayed at one hotel that was intercepting HTTP requests and rewriting them so that if you went to, say, Amazon, you'd be buying with their referral code. Pretty sleazy.

As others have noted, it's good to proxy. And it's wise to assume the worst about hotel networks; no, any foreign network; no, any network; no, any communications medium. Probably even your own thoughts.

VPN

Problem solved.

Shouldnt be trusting another persons network in the first place.

I work for a competing pay to use service.

For the last 3 years I have worked for another pay to use wireless service.  I won't say the name but we supply most of the wireless service in Hiltons, Radisons and Embassy suites in the united states.

Thankfully it sounds like they are not even trying to lie about what is happening, and are say they are trying to push advertisements to their wireless users so I don't need to explain why they wouldn't be using a proxey.

After a user authenticates at a location there is no need for any of this redirecting per page every time a user tries going to a different site.  Any good wireless gateway (and many bad ones) simply track each user using a session assigned to their mac address on the gateway, Nothing needs to be done to track service usage as long as they are active.

The only reason (and I don't know why they haven't been using this as the excuse) is to be able to claim monitoring illegal web usage such as kiddy porn or illegal music downloads.  We had a few places claim they needed to be able to track this, but we dropped them instead of willingly tracking users for a b.s. reason.

This is just another case where a company that is charging for a service are trying to make even more money doing secretive and underhanded business practices.

Hotel ToS can be very onerous

Depending on the hotel, the terms of service can claim all sorts of crazy things. Whether these are enforceable or not is another matter (IANAL). I usually anticipate that they reserve the right to log just about anything, but the worst I've seen was from a hotel in San Francisco. The service there (which wasn't even free at the time - 2003), claimed that anything you uploaded through the service you provided a perpetual, royalty-free license for them to do whatever they want with it. This would mean that on a business level, this would make this hotel service have the ability to redistribute any work you transmit over the internet, which is absurd. Now, I've often seen terms like this for specific websites (like forums), or claims that you are providing the ISP with the right to route your traffic as needed (which is probably legally implicit in your using an ISP).

When it comes to where you've been and what you've transmitted, I assume that many places log everything. If you don't like it, that's what VPNs are for. However, claiming a perpetual license to anything you transmit is just insane.

Come on now...

Just relakks [relakks.com]!

/happy customer...

Wait just a sec...

Or rather, that's not dedication *wink*.

on his honeymoon

Herf was on his honeymoon when he did this sleuthing. Now that's dedication.

I imagine he's not going to be let to forget that any time soon.

use a proxy in hotels

http://www.mysecureisp.com/ [mysecureisp.com] is a good one.

Of course I click "yes".

Many legit sites don't bother to get "real" certificates from Verisign or whereever. I'm forever clicking "yes" already.