a request for help in an experiment from UW and UCB

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Ed Lazowska <lazowska () cs washington edu>
Date: July 24, 2007 1:27:06 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: Ed Lazowska <lazowska () cs washington edu>
Subject: For IP?

Dave,

Would you be willing to post this to IP in order to help UW and Berkeley
collect some web data?  It's a bit on the edge for IP, but it's a good
cause.

About a month ago, there was a Slashdot story about a Texas ISP that was
generating revenue by injecting ads into web pages accessed by its
customers.

To figure out how widespread this practice is, UW and Berkeley have put
together some infrastructure that serves Web pages including scripts
that check the page integrity once it arrives at the Web browser.  If
your ISP is inserting content on the pages you're viewing, then visiting
the UW/Berkeley site will detect this, letting you (and the researchers)
know.  So it's a service for the visitor to the page, and it's a data
point for the researchers.

We're trying to get as many people as possible to visit the web page --
each visit is simultaneously a measurement point for us and does a nice
service for the visitor.

Here's a digg story about the project:

     http://www.digg.com/security/Are_ISPs_modifying_your_web_pages

and here's the link to the measurement page -- visiting this page is
***safe*** and determines whether your ISP is inserting content:

     http://vancouver.cs.washington.edu


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