Coming Soon to a Wireless Hotspot Near You: Ads

mindless4210 writes "A new generation of spam is born with the launch of FreeFi's new Wi-Fi advertising network. It is the first service of its kind, with intentions of delivering ad content to hotspots around the world starting in mid-Summer. FreeFi's President, Lawrence Laffer, says that the service displays a 'persistent set of ads adjacent to the user's browser without use of invasive advertising software or pop-up ads.' He also claims '[their] market research indicates that, except for pop-ups, people really don't mind ads.'" This seems like the kind of thing that would keep me from using "free" wireless access, but I've a feeling I'm in the minority.

Re:Past experience

[morcego]

At least in Brazil, there are many ad-based, free dialup ISPs. Many on business for more than 2 years, and doing well.

Re:Past experience

[mekkab]

NetZero still has a LIMITED free service. I used it for immediate dial-up access when my cablemodem went down.

Re:Must be closed

[KingOfBLASH]

That's not necessarily true. They could set up the access point to run all connections through a proxy, or even run the wireless access point as a proxy, which basically would allow the computer to change web pages on the fly. So they could force all content to resize into a frame (or iframe, or table, or do any of a number of HTML tricks) on whatever portion of the screen they allocate for content, and then put the ad bar in. Or they could create a flash "float over" ad bar. Or they could do any of a number of things to modify the web page, without requiring the user to install any special software at all. Note this would even allow you to play games / whatever online, because it would only modify traffic going over port 80, and then only modify HTML.

No problem at all

[DaHat]

Long ago I took up updating my hosts file with data from http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/ which provides a list of known ad servers that you then point back to your local machine.

I decided to take this one step further and change the mapped to IP to be that of SCO, so that each time I come to Slashdot and don't see their ads, I instead see a small bit of the SCO homepage, what you might call a mini DoS

Re:Must be closed

[whovian]

I get a hunch they already can do that. I mean, to get an IP address you lease your IP address in their redirecting your web browser's first request to their log-on site. That would be the simplest way to put in advertising. But of course as these things go, users end up having ads thrust upon them (google take exception).

Re:Ads... so what?

[clichekiller]

That would be true, except for one small thing, at least at the Starbucks in Phoenix. It's not free. I have to pay $6.00 and hour to use the wireless connection there through T-Mobile. So I would very much like the idea of having a free hotspot in return for adds. Like was mentioned above it would even be cool if the adds were for local vendors.

Re:Windows Only?

[nandhp]

It says "FreeFi allows full web access needing no plug-ins or additional software on your PC."

Re:Must be closed

[MrLizardo]

Looking at the website, it seems to indicate that the banner would appear in a separate window. Would it be possible for it to work the way you described it in that situation? I'm not flaming/trolling, I'm just curious because I'm behind on hacking around in proxies, I've always just used NAT...

-Mr. Lizardo

Re:Ads... so what?

[nightsweat]

I don't put up with them. I use a hosts file that points most of the douleclick and big ad serving domains to 127.0.0.0

Re:But how does it work?

[Anonymous Coward]

The QwikBar suggest an client-side application, and not only a proxy.
Plus you need to login, which indicates it's not a transparant proxy on the Freefi server which modifies all Port 80 traffic, IMHO, but a separated app (the QwikBar) which gives you adds tailered to you clicks.

Re:Must be closed

[Apreche]

Right, so they modify the html. And firefox modifies it right back to where it came from with my handy dandy user-content.css. If they work some evil magik that gets around it I'll just use that adblock extension. Remember, there is NO WAY to stop the determined geek.

Re:Recovering the cost MY ASS.

[Otto]

A coffee shop (or any business, or private party) can't just hook up a cablemodem and resell their bandwidth. Their ISP would have a fucking FIT. It's against their Terms of Service.

Generally, you don't get to resell your cablemodem bandwidth. You might be able to work out a deal with your ISP, but you'll definitely be paying more than $70.

I have yet to see a cablemodem provider that doesn't offer "business class". You're right about the $70 being low, but if the lowest grade of business class service they offer is greater than about $200-$250, I'd be freakin' shocked.

And those Terms of Service do allow reselling, or at least use in a such a way as to allow something like internet for your customers. That's the whole point of getting business class service in the first place.

Low end business class in my area runs around $150, gives you 6mbit down, 1.5 up, and yes, you can resell to your greedy little hearts content.

Re:heheh

[josh3736]

I suggest adding a new error code number, 5000, to the list of valid HTML error codes for this purpose.

Or how about 507 or 508 or 520? A four-digit code would probably confuse some browsers.

Or, even better, just use 402! The RFC [w3.org] defines it as "402 Payment Required."