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Charter Communications Hijacks Windows Live Search Engine

From Tony Bradley, CISSP-ISSAP, for About.com

4 of 6

Is It 'Opting' If I Was Never Asked?

Clicking on 'About This Page' took me to a screen explaining that Charter's new "service" was implemented to automatically eliminate some phantom error pages which I never encountered to begin with. Apparently, Charter felt there was an issue that needed to be addressed and that they, with the help of Yahoo! are just the ones to fix it.

According to the message, this "feature" is an OptIn program. Unfortunately, Charter Communications seems unclear on the concept of 'opting' in. Let's see what Webster has to say about it. According to Webster.com, The definition of 'opt' is "to make a choice; especially : to decide in favor of something"

Opt, is also the root of 'options' meaning choices. In order for me to 'opt' to use Charter Communications' 'service' or 'feature', I wold first need to be presented with my options, so that I can choose. If they simply redirect my web page without notifying, much less asking, me- that is just called browser hijacking. There is nothing 'OptIn' about hijacking my browser by default.

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