I have called Verizon 4 times, each resulting in a promised callback, which never happens, although they did read me something from my "file" indicating that they do have this network "optimization" experiment in process. I believe the FCC should be notified about this practice. It is dangerous and breaking my application. I have screenshots where their compression server produces broken images.

Although a technical solution, this is not a practical option for several reasons: 1) https apps run slower in general, so why slow down the app? 2) why require users to complicate their computing environment if it is not necessary?

It is Verizon that is violating the spirit of trust which an provider of Internet connectivity should maintain. I have reported this to the FCC. I have also studied the service agreement and find nothing in this service agreement which permits Verizon Wireless to rewrite my pages. So not only is this unethical, it violates their own service ageement.

To All --

I registered just to thank all of you for posting to this thread and solving this problem for me. I am no tech, programmer, or code monkey, I am just a writer. (For example, the suggestion of installing and using Privoxy is a learning curve. I did actually figure out how to install and use phpMyAdmin all by my little lonesome, but it was a painful experience.)

I noticed this issue first on my own blog, actually, and only in the address line to images. I didn't pick up on the script "injection," and some of the other subtleties.

I am on a Mac running OS 10.5.5, and have Firefox 3.0.5 and Safari 3.1.2 as my browsers. From what I can see, Safari is unaffected by this, which fits the overall drift of what's happening - perhaps I was singled out as a Verizon customer with a Mac who used Firefox predominantly, or possibly the "injection" and image compression test is browser specific.

I can't speak for Safari for the PC, but it might be worth a look if this is still an issue for anyone.

I'd especially like to thank ArcherJanvier for his comment early on, which saved me some trouble with Verizon. I'm not done with them yet, but I went past the Tier 2 support to a supervisor, so hopefully I won't get stonewalled outside the Verizon firewall, so to speak.

I am very interested in any responses from the FCC on this issue. If need be, I could see filing a complaint as well. Should we all do this?

To All --

For what this is worth, it appears that Verizon has surrendered their stranglehold on my bandwidth. What I did was go to the supervisory level over the tier 2 support, state my case plainly, and point out that my trust in Verizon has been undermined. I feel I was speaking to someone who was reasonable and seemed to empathize with my points. I did not receive the promised callback (yet), but I got the results I was looking for.

I have a friend who does server work for a living, and he badmouthed Verizon for a couple of emails to me pretty sharply. Unfortunately, their reputation preceded them in his case.

I don't know what to watch for next, but obviously I will be watching.

So, does AT&T stack up better in this regard?

I failed at every attempt to get Verizon to acknowledge the problem they created. Despite all the evidence and testing to isolate the problem, the customer service staff always said "if you have Internet access, then our job is done".
However, maybe good news from the efforts of you others...in the somewhat routine "coverage area update" of VZAccess software, I suddenly no longer seem to have the problem? After today's update, the GIF images are animated again, and bogus code is not inserted on download of web pages.
If this persists, then maybe Verizon has resolved the issue.
I hope you all keep us posted of progress or changes in your experience with Verizon wireless broadband.
I am still annoyed with Verizon, sold my stock holdings in it last month. And I may still switch to AT&T service, just haven't had the time to work with someone there.

Over50 --

I can certainly empathize. I suspect that the combined efforts of several have given us this result. I would think the simple threat of having to throw personnel hours at answering an FCC inquiry would get management attention, if nothing else.

I still have not gotten a call back about the issue, and I suspect their legal staff have told them to cease and desist and for those in the know to just zip it when it comes to the situation. Who knows? Maybe someone is pounding the pavement now.

I asked a friend who does server work about all this. His take was that Verizon was so big that one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing. He said he moved to Comcast because the support and prices where good and that his working experience with them is just plain more honest.

I don't know what Comcast has to offer in terms of wireless internet access.

My internet access seem a lot faster since their image compression and script "injection" ended, too ...

Best wishes.

I am a techie geek and I has trouble getting Privoxy to work right! It comes with a bucket load of filters that I did not want. Not a good solution as it did not actually fix the problem, just removed the "injected" JavaScript that was covering up the abuse.

I also have not had a response to my emails. I demanded that they either admit they are doing this, stop doing it, or admit that they have been hacked.

I also notice that my browser is no longer effected. (I also did some testing and this was browser specific, Opera and Galeon were not effected, just "gecko-engine" based browsers: Firefox and Epiphany)

Thank you! That may have been the "final straw" to get them to stop this abuse. I will also be interested in the FCC's response.

--RayJ

PS: Go Team Linux!

Verizon has changed its tactics. It went away for a while. Now the url it points to is in the US rather than ISRAEL. The ISP is monmouth.com. The ip numbers they are using are 64.19.142.*

Verizon refuses to acknowledge this practice and Monmouth will not divulge who owns these IP numbers. It is more serious now. They are changing other tags:

Here is the changed script tag as it is served through Verizon Wireless broadband:

<script src="mhtml:http://64.19.142.6/multipart/20090227/14/19/youporn.com_0_044c26679a8dc497b5969c85f8b24959.mht!http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Here is the actual script tag on the server:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

The image tags look like this: <img src="http://64.19.142.11/bizyweb.comm/images/psog_bizy.jpg" width="850" title="Enter" alt="Enter"/>

The actual page look like this:

<img src="images/psog_bizy.jpg" width="850" title="Enter" alt="Enter"/></a>

THIS IS SERIOUS. Trying to get thru the FCC bureaucracy.

You can find out who owns an IP via any whois site (like: http://cqcounter.com/whois/) and all the IPs you posted belong to Monmouth Internet Corp.

The script you posted is Google Analytics and that is added by whoever owns the site you are on. It is very common to see that these days. (I use Google Analytics on all my sites).

But, I just checked a page and I also am seeing the changed URLS! (I tested southwest.com) src="http://64.19.142.12/southwest.comm/content/images/home_page/topnav-divider.gif"

I checked a few of the sites that I work on and do not see any injected javascript. Remember that the javascripts only purpose was to cover up the fact that they were changing the URLs. I guess they are no longer concerned about it.

Unfortunately, the "unwashed" internet masses, that do not know (or care) about things like this, will not be motivated to do anything about it. So you are stuck. I suspect that if Verizon shows a bandwidth savings, then ALL ISPs will start doing this. Say goodbye to free information online, now it will be changed at will by ISPs. Can you guess what comes next? Censoring...

--RayJ

Monmouth will not divulge who owns this block of IP numbers.

Google analytics code looks like this in my page:
<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script> So in IE the line has been changed to:
<script src="mhtml:http://64.19.142.6/multipart/20090227/14/19/youporn.com_0_044c26679a8dc497b5969c85f8b24959.mht!http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
In FF, the line is slightly different because FF does not support mhtml. So FF does not have the javascript, but IE does have the javascript to manipulate the MHTML url.

I spoke at length with Verizon last night. The business office says this is a "business decision" and they own all of the data that moves on their network, thus have the "right" to alter it. He said that if I paid Verizon $500 one time fee I can get a static ip for my broadband which does not participate in the data optimization initiative. Of course, there is no guarantee how long this will be.

This is egregious in my mind. Definitely a form of censorship.

I see that it is time to make more people aware that Verizon (and I assume all ISPs) believe that they "own" data just because they transport it. That would be like some shipping company changing the engines on the cars they haul and then justifying it by saying, "we own every item that we transport, so we have the right to make changes."

There is one positive that can come from this. If more servers would make https (secure and encrypted) their default, then the ability to change anything in between server and browser would be removed.

--RayJ

Oh my...I agree that the problem went away for a blissful month. No code inserted, as I checked periodically and all functioned fine.

But I now see I again have extra code injected before every image pointer. At least this time it is not changing my animated GIF's into 1-frame non-animated. It is also not corrupting data entry forms with garbage code like before.

The inserted code before a month ago added "mhtml:http://62.0.5.129/multipart/20081218/23/25/www.mywebsite.com_2_cadabe3abed1fe8a166f19c3fd02cec7.mht!", or a variation of that, before the image pointer. This had nothing to do with Google Analytics as Sheryl posted, as I do not have that.

But now the inserted code simply adds "64.19.142.13/" between my "http://" and the "www." written code.

So, while it appears to not be an unusable situation for me, it is most distressing to have my own web pages hijacked by Verizon. More worrisome that it can change without notice and create a new problem. Verizon failed to address the problems created the last time they did this.

Addendum to my message just posted, I did a little test. Kind of wondering if the hard code in my web pages the uses relative image references versus coding the entire URL of image makes a difference.

Thought it might, when I have <img src> code that is "/folder/folder/image.gif", that maybe Verizon is inserting the entire URL. Which they are. But I also changed the <img src> code to "http://www.mywebsite.com/folder/folder/image.gif". Verizon changes this to "http://64.19.142.13/mywebsite.comm/folder/folder/image.gif". Notice the extra "m" in .comm.

So they actualy are REMOVING AND INSERTING the code. What do the more experienced professionals make of this..anything?

To All --

I'd like to thank Sheryl for bringing this back to my attention.

Since this stupidity started I primarily use Safari, which appears to be unaffected by Verizon's tampering, but began to notice Safari hanging up for many seconds after only loading a small percentage of a page. Whether this is an artifact of the tampering they are doing to my account signal I don't know, though I tend to suspect this.

Just a note: I noticed recently that my upload speed with Verizon is actually SLOWER than my download speed. However, I did not notice any address line tampering in Firefox at the time, though I suspected something was going on. Again, nothing I can base this on.

I contacted Verizon today and told a tech rep trainer (effectively over the second tier level) what I observed happening, explained the history, told him in no uncertain terms that I am fed up with this meddling, and that many others are aware of this activity. I predicted to him, that, once I explained all this to him and he finally identified what is actually happening to our accounts at Verizon's hands, I would never hear from him again, as happened with the last tech rep supervisor I explained this to in my first "round." He took that as a challenge (bless his heart) and promised me he would get back to me. We'll see what happens.

I told him that if he does actually encounter someone who has knowledge of what Verizon is pulling with their customers, to make that individual understand that there are folks who are pursing a complaint against them through the FCC, and that I suspected that most of them are not as forgiving as I am.

Personally, if this nonsense stops and I see no evidence of anything else occurring, I'm happy. To take Verizon on means that I have to find a way to break out of the contract and find another service provider that wouldn't play so fast and loose with their customers. That or I just eat the costs. As for a better provider, when I started investigating this issue, a friend of mine who does server work remarked that he hated it when companies do this kind of thing, which really was a mouthful. He was saying that these kind of behind-the-scenes tinkerings are not uncommon. And, he noted that Verizon is such a huge company that one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing.

This does not mean that I wouldn't pursue a formal complaint. I just want to give this round with Verizon a little more time.

I would like to ask if anyone finds any specific "code injection" that accompanies this image compression redirection to post it.

You guys should really report this to consumerist.com. They can research it and publish a story to draw attention to the issue.