Are Charter Broadband customers prepared to be spied upon?
Sleaze is still sleaze - no matter
how you slice it.
Three days after it emerged that broadband provider
Charter Communications plans to begin eavesdropping on its
subscribers’ web serving to build profiles for advertisers, serious
questions about the technology remain unanswered — including whether
it’s really possible to opt-out of the data
collection.
Charter Communications, one of the largest ISPs is the country, confirmed that it’s partnering with a company called NebuAd, which pays ISPs to let it install a monitoring box on their networks to sniff customer traffic.
The plan is already drawing unwanted attention from Congressman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), two key lawmakers in the area of telecoms.
“Any service to which a subscriber does not affirmatively subscribe and that can result in the collection of information about the web-related habits and interests of a subscriber […] raises substantial questions,” the pair wrote in a letter to Charter’s CEO…
The legality of eavesdropping on Americans’ internet usage also isn’t clear. The practice could violate anti-wiretapping law…
Aside from where it’s required by law, I’m also not especially convinced about corporate concern over customer privacy.
Charter Communications, one of the largest ISPs is the country, confirmed that it’s partnering with a company called NebuAd, which pays ISPs to let it install a monitoring box on their networks to sniff customer traffic.
The plan is already drawing unwanted attention from Congressman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), two key lawmakers in the area of telecoms.
“Any service to which a subscriber does not affirmatively subscribe and that can result in the collection of information about the web-related habits and interests of a subscriber […] raises substantial questions,” the pair wrote in a letter to Charter’s CEO…
The legality of eavesdropping on Americans’ internet usage also isn’t clear. The practice could violate anti-wiretapping law…
Aside from where it’s required by law, I’m also not especially convinced about corporate concern over customer privacy.
Posted: Sat - May 17, 2008 at 01:18 PM