U.S., UK ISPs Track Web Habits, Sell Data to Advertisers

[CoFree]

U.S., UK ISPs Track Web Habits, Sell Data to Advertisers

Providers testing ways to use the goldmine of data locked away in their tubes

ISPs throughout the United States and UK are using deep packet inspection to track surfers’ online activities – search queries, web sites visited, and information entered, among other things – in order to sell gleamed data to advertisers interested in better targeting their advertisements.

The practice, largely swept under the rug “for fear of [a] customer revolt,” says one unnamed executive, currently targets about 10 percent of all internet customers in the United States. Front Porch, a U.S. advertiser that buys data from ISPs’ deep packet programs, says that it has detailed web-use data for more than 100,000 customers.

None of the advertising firms involved would name whom they are buying data from, instead telling the Washington Post that “it’s up to the providers to announce how they deal with customer data.”

A number of ISPs, however, have already altered their customer service agreements: Embarq, the fourth largest provider of data services in the United States, calls it a “preference advertising service,” and providers Wide Open West and Knology have openly disclosed the fact that they are working with advertising firm NebuAd.

Proponents of deep packet inspection claim that it’s a win for everyone involved: customers see more ads that are relevant, ISPs make money, site owners see better returns, and advertisers catch better data.

ISPs claim to remove customers’ personal data, with significant effort taken to strip surfing histories of anything that could identify an individual user. “I don’t view it as violating any privacy at all,” says Knology marketing VP Anthony Palermo, “My understanding is that all these companies go through great pains to hash out information that is specific to the consumer.”

NebuAd says that it protects users’ data in two ways: by identifying customers with an arbitrary number untraceable to their original IP address – a technique that Lilburn, Georgia resident Thelma Arnold, also known as AOL Searcher No. 4417749, could easily disprove – and by filtering out all data that relates to sensitive activities, such as e-mail and visits to banking, health, or pornography sites.

Bob Dykes, chief executive of NebuAd, says that in some ways its method of protecting consumer data is even better than that of Google, which stores search logs by easily-traceable IP addresses and parses Gmail accounts for advertising information.

Privacy advocates are not satisfied, however, by ISPs’ efforts to empower customers with control over their data: an easily-lost browser cookie tracks users that opt out, meaning they could be back in the system if they clear their browser cache or switch to another computer. Further, text acknowledging the advertising partnership is buried deep within service agreements: Knology customers have to search through 27 pages of legalese in order to find one “vague reference” to the company’s tracking system.

Many ISPs have a long and storied history with deep packet inspection, as it is an effective means of monitoring and controlling customer activity: Comcast’s BitTorrent controversy, recently resolved, uses deep packet inspection hardware from Sandvine to prevent users from contributing to the BitTorrent swarm after they’ve finished downloading, and Canadian ISP Rogers uses similar technology to inject subscriber notices into surfers’ web pages.

Web surfers east of the Atlantic recently found themselves in the middle of a similar, secret arrangement between UK ISP BT and advertising company Phorm, after a handful of intrepid users noticed “dodgy redirects” in their internet service. An online petition against the arrangement, hosted by the British government, has so far gathered over 10,600 signatures.

[Sesshomaru]

Two things... I don't ever wanna hear webmasters bitch and moan about smart consumers using a modified hosts file to block ad servers or using apps like the ad-block plugin for FireFox. Banner ads are irrelevant, obnoxious, and can cause a page to take longer to load in a web browser. I don't want to see Viagra ads while browsing my team page on ESPN.

Two... the search engine profiling is very real, here is a guide someone posted on xtreme-source awhile back, contains a lot of useful safety tips for FireFox users:

http://www.xtreme-source.com/web-email/ ... refox.html

Modified Host File Guide: http://www.xtreme-source.com/tutorials- ... t-ads.html

@CoFree I'm not trying to pimp X-S or anything, these guides are very useful and something every Firefox user should be aware of.

[CoFree]

your are very right man.
Good post