Posts Tagged ‘advertising’
NebuAd CEO Defends Snooping Tech
Bob Dykes, the CEO of behavioral advertising firm NebuAD, spent yesterday before Congress, defending his company’s business model of buying your browsing records from ISPs in order to deliver more personalized advertising.
I remain somewhat fascinated that nobody in Congress or the media bothers to mention that NebuAD’s current opt-out system doesn’t actually opt you out of browsing tracking, just tailored ad delivery. Nor does anybody seem aware that ISPs have been selling your clickstream data to websites like Compete for years, without any opt-out option whatsoever.
The Times also notes that Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House telecommunications Internet subcommittee, confirmed he’s working on a law that would require all such systems be opt-in. It’s hard to think such a push would survive the onslaught of online advertising lobbyists, but it’s refreshing to see Congress trying to put the power back into the hands of consumers for a change.
That’s right folks. Depending on which ISP you throw your money at, your searching and browsing habits could already be in the process of being sold to advertising companies so they can serve you up JUST the right ad when you’re on a certain website. However, we do not know just how much information that your ISP could be giving away. This is something that neither NebuAd or the ISPs have been straight forward about.
I wouldn’t get my hopes up on this sort of thing ending anytime soon. If the government can tell ISPs to split your internet traffic and send the split side to their datacenters for examing and indexing.. and get away with it, I doubt anything will be done about this.
However, everyone that uses the internet has the ability to contact their service providers, congressman/woman, senators, or all of the above and tell them what is happening and request that it stops. Although, it would probably be more effective to seek out and blow up the lobbyists backing this sort of thing. 
Tags: advertising, internet, nebuad