On 03/10/2017 07:28 PM, Rich Freeman wrote: > On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 2:50 PM, Corbin Bird <corbinb...@charter.net> wrote: >> >> My ISP ( Charter ) merged with Time-Warner. New name "Spectrum" >> >> 1 # : Now I have intermittent connectivity. > > Nothing you can do about that if it really is connectivity. > >> >> 2 # : And with the death of FCC privacy rules, the new ISP is forcing me >> to update their records ( for sale-of purposes ). This includes phone ( >> all ), SSN, bank account numbers, and credit card numbers. >> >> 3 # : the ISP attempting to force agreement to "no communications >> allowed with the FCC". Also is attempting to force agreement to >> "Arbitration with the ISP as the Arbiter" for all complaints. >> >> 4 # : billing is only online now. Not allowed to see a Account >> Statement, or receive any "receipt for payment" until I comply with ISP >> demands. > > While I certainly agree with your frustrations on these, I suspect > your options are pretty limited if they really are a monopoly. You > may just have to live with these if you don't want to do something > exotic for internet access. > >> 5 # : external e-mail clients ( Thunderbird, Claws-Mail, etc. ) are now >> starting to have problems. ISP solution -> must use their web based >> e-mail app only ( only works with Windoze, surprise! ). >> >> 6 # : ISP is starting to filter customers web access. The ISP is >> deciding what sites customers are allowed to see. ( look up the practice >> called "ransom" ). > > I would see if a VPN works for you. It would solve these problems at > least. Of course, they could do something to block the VPN, but I > believe some services can work over SSL/etc unless your ISP is > carefully blacklisting them. > >> >> NOTE : The ?hijack technique? will corrupt the portage trees if you use >> "emerge-webrsync". >> > > Can you define "corrupt" here? Looking at the source emerge-webrsync > should at the least do a digest check if available (and if it isn't > available I'd be interested in that), and if you set the webrsync-gpg > FEATURE flag in make.conf it should also check the gpg signature. > Unless your ISP is doing a Gentoo-specific MITM the first should > detect problems, and unless our gpg checking is completely broken the > latter should detect anything the ISP tries to do to the file. They > could of course prevent you from syncing, but tampering shouldn't be > an issue. >
Now using a VPN. The "emerge-webrsync" setup that I had been using did have the "gpg" check functioning. It is looking like they are attempting to attach or embed a "process" of some sort, that executes on the local machine. The first attempt at ?blocking? "emerge-webrsync" did something to the tarball contents ( ebuilds or metadata damaged ). Running this command started crashing without error : "emerge -pv --update --newuse --tree --deep --with-bdeps=y @world" The second attempt at ?blocking? was to completely block the HTTP requests generated by "emerge-webrsync". Going to a VPN, and "emerge --sync" seems to have gotten around them so far. NOTE : the first "emerge --sync" made lots of complaints indicating the portage trees had been damaged. Corbin
