Midwestern data pimping alive and well Though the head of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet has urged American ISPs to "hold off" on the use of so-called behavioral ad systems, it seems at least one company has yet to heed the suggestion. According to a forum post at Broadband Reports, the Midwestern ISP known only as WOW! continues to …
"NebuAd says it anonymizes all user data. And users can opt-out of the system. But the opt-out is cookie-based. If you install a new browser or move to a new machine, the tracking starts anew."
If it requires a cookie to be placed on the user's machine, it's not an opt-out at all. There are any number of reasons to not use cookies, ranging from security-conscious to fear of the unknown (since many non-IT people tell others that cookies are only used to track your movements and activities). There are also any number of methods to not use cookies, ranging from disabling them in your browser to disabling them via security products to using a browser that doesn't support cookies to manually or automatically rejecting cookies based on certain criteria.
Using a cookie as an opt-out method means that people using browsers which don't support cookies, people using security products which block cookies, and people manually/automatically rejecting cookies are not allowed to opt out. Any opt-out method which makes it impossible for even one user to opt-out is completely unacceptable. What's next? An opt-out method that requires an ActiveX applet?
These snoopers run adspace-brokering "partnerships". People who are suckered into buying their web adspace from these snoopers and their brokerages pay for their ads based on how many times they're clicked on. The people who provide webpage space for ads from this brokerage have software that checks who is visiting their page, and what their interests are, based on the snoopers' snooping and serve up, instead of randomly rotated ads, ads that tend to match those interests from amongst those who've bought adspace from the brokerage.
Everyone gets paid by the click. Well, everyone except the people who are being snooped on (that's you, the browser, and the owners of every web site you've ever visited). So the triumvirate of Adbroker, webad server and adspace buyer are happy because there's more chance of a paid for click leading to a purchase, so it's more effective.
You're just being snooped on. Without any control over what these snoopers do with that information.
Is to let them snoop, check the details of all the web pages for a while so you can see if you are being targeted by ads and then let those companies know in no uncertain terms what you think of their stupid business practices in dealing with these lowlifes and also let the company which originally paid for the ad space know so that they can sue for their own set of damages. If lawyers were invented for anything, it's to help put these cretins out of work.
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