Senate Scrutinizes Privacy Issues of ISP User Tracking 109
Hugh Pickens writes "As companies collect, use, and disseminate data regarding online users, there is concern that tracking individuals' Internet activity and gathering information from online users violates their expectations of privacy. The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday to look at the policy issues, and the hottest topic will be proposed systems by which ISPs can watch users and sell information about their surfing habits to advertising companies. The Center for Democracy and Technology has issued a report suggesting that these systems may violate federal law (PDF). 'Advertising per se is not the evil here,' says Leslie Harris from CDT. 'It's the collection of individuals' information, usually without their knowledge, always without their consent, creation of profiles and the complete inability of people to make choices about that.' On the other side NebuAd, the most active ad-targeting company, says its profiles are interest-based, and not personally identifiable. 'We have designed our entire company to make sure that we stay on the opt-out side of those laws and policies,' says NebuAd CEO Robert Dykes. Charter Communications announced last month that it would suspend a trial of NebuAd due to customer concerns about privacy."
Yeah, and? (Score:3, Informative)
Hey, guess what... if a partner in a two-way correspondence chooses to share details of that correspondence, that's their choice (i.e., don't give private info to someone you don't trust). If you choose not to make safe your correspondence from third parties via encryption, that's your problem.
I'm willing to risk some troll or flamebait mods here to make a point:
No correspondence should ever be considered absolutley private. The same tools that allow data aggregation by companies like Google and ISPs give us better access to information and (arguably) a better quality of life. You have to take the bad with the good.
Creation of profiles allow vendors to serve us better. They allow better targeting of ads so we're not bombarded with ads for things we have no interest in (ok, in theory. In practice, this needs further work). They allow people and businesses to target our needs better, so it's easier for me to find what I'm looking for.
As long as we have the ability to anonymize and encrypt our traffic (which isn't a given), I have no problem with profiling. Those who want to opt out can do so easily... and if there is enough demand for it, there will be off-the-shelf tools for joe sixpack to do so.
So my point is this: Allow us to anonymize our traffic. Allow us to encrypt our traffic. Then you can go ahead and profile all you want.
Re:Boiling a frog (Score:3, Informative)
Democracy in action :) - or rather that's what happens when the free market and democracy collide.
We had a similar situation in the UK recently with a company called Phorm. ISP's were entering into secret deals with them to collect our data so that they could modify the html streams returned from sites to inject targeted advertising. i.e. pure evil was afoot :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorm [wikipedia.org]
Re:---HOW--- are they showing ads? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:---HOW--- are they showing ads? (Score:1, Informative)
Actually, other articles have stated this is not the case.
NebuAd gets a bunch of various advertising spaces from a bunch of different web sites. Advertisers sign on with them. They act as middlemen, and an advertiser's ad may appear on any of the sites they have a deal with. It's the same as google ads in that sense. The difference is that google reads the page, and shows ads related to the content on that page; nothing personal is collected. NebuAd, on the other hand, partners with ISPs and collects user data. The ads that are displayed are related to your previous activity on other sites, but they only show up in NebuAd spaces; they don't hijack the ad spaces on any old site.
So don't worry, they're not screwing over other businesses, just you.
Re:Yeah, and? (Score:2, Informative)