Holy cow. It seems this has had a direct effect: they're no longer injecting javascript into webpages. I just tried Amazon, eBay, and a few others where the script injection used to be present, and it's no longer there.
I absolutely can not understate just how happy I am about this.
As exciting as this is to be posted on a high-volume website, I honestly doubt CMA is going to change their practices on this issue.
If anything, the Acceptable Use Policy change on the 4th was a sign that they'd be reluctant to change their stance on this issue at all. They honestly don't care.
Addendum: as soon as they started doing this, all of my port forwarding broke. I'm not sure if this is a coincidence or if it was on their end, but the technicians were of no help.
I posted about this on reddit a few weeks ago[0]. Someone in the thread said they had contacted the Better Business Bureau, but I'm not sure what their process is or how far it's gotten.
There has also been a short email thread in which their official response is this:
> Mr. [redacted],
> CMA is in the process of trying to find ways to drive income from our internet service in new ways. These new ways would allow us to expand our service offering and maintain the cost of the current residential and business internet services.
> We’ve been testing a new service which allows us to overlay / insert some local advertisement on certain web pages. A company called Route 66 is our partner. Right now, you’re barraged with a lot of internet advertising, popups, etc… This has become part of the internet experience. At the core, we’re simply trying to better customize some of this experience. And possibly give you access to highly relevant local advertising.
> Having said that, I’ve recently become a little more familiar with what some of these ads look like and how they operate. I will concede that I’m not sure they strike the perfect balance between being information and non-invasive. Like I mentioned, we’re involved in a test and the feedback we’re getting from the test is helping us to refine and improve how (or if) we’ll continue here.
So I’m stopping short of saying that we’ll be ceasing this type of internet advertising experiment. But I do want you to know that your feedback has resulted in the beginning of a pretty intense internal dialogue.
> Thanks for your feedback.
> [redacted]
> CMA Communications
It's absolute insanity and a major breach of trust that they'd inject their own content into webpages I visit. I'm permanently using a remote VPN for all outgoing traffic through CMA.
My ISP does something similar, but it's meant to inject ads: one ad that scrolls in from the bottom every two-three minutes (for ten seconds or so, and that can't be dismissed), as well as another ad that covers up ads that other websites serve up.[0]
I've now resorted to using a remote VPN for all of my traffic.