Somehow the sewage company doesn't analyze my urine (I hope) to figure out if I prefer spicy or sour food and get an extra buck from third parties, and somehow they're still in the business.
I don't want my search engine to do that either. They should provide me damn accurate results and get out of my way.
Unfortunately, whereas I have a choice of several good ISPs here (UK), I have a choice of precisely one good search engine - Google - and it analyses my traffic to high heaven. (And I've tried DuckDuckGo, on several occasions for several weeks at a time, and I'm afraid it still sucks.)
What aspect of DDG "sucks" for you?
I haven't seen a single reputable ISP do this anywhere. It would illegal.
Is the US really such a third world nation that not even basic regulation like this exist?
US Mobile companies inject identification headers in unsecured HTTP calls, for advertiser tracking; and in other cases allow servers to ping the user's IP back to the ISP to get full details of the user (including addresses).
The regulatory agents responsible for regulating the cable and mobile companies in the US are right now hellbent on removing net neutrality and are fighting against the consumer. Fat chance of those "basic regulation"s existing or surviving.
Turns out our dev environment didn't force CDN assets to load over HTTPS, so my ISP injected some JS into a library we were loading.
I tweeted at them, and they not only verified that it came from them, but also that they consider hijacking and modifying my traffic to be a service.
They'll also appear if you're nearing your data allowance or if their email service (that you probably don't use) is undergoing maintenance. When I last asked, there is no possible way to opt-out or disable these.
Mobile ISPs inject horrible 90s JavaScript which recompresses images (see e.g. https://calendar.perfplanet.com/2013/mobile-isp-image-recomp...).
Many ISPs - both mobile and wired - inject code to send messages about your account.
ISPs like Comcast have tried objecting ads:
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2925839/net-neutrality/cod...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/how-a-banner-ad-...
After leaving Mozilla, Andreas Gal described ISPs reselling search engine queries and results to Google competitors:
https://andreasgal.com/2015/03/30/data-is-at-the-heart-of-se...
> Is the US really such a third world nation that not even basic regulation like this exist?
First, the US is by definition the First World (USSR et al. being second world, third being "everyone not allied with first two"). Second, we have somewhat different ideas about freedom that, often, lead to an extreme lack of regulation; the hope is that this gives more freedom and we'll work around abusive actors (yes, I know monopolies are an obvious weak point in the system).