 MrMoodyFree range slavePremium
join:2002-09-03
Smithfield, NC | Snooping ALL ISPs snoop and keep logs of your activity, don't kid yourself otherwise.
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The public is a poor business manager. |
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| Cox cable I can tell you that Cox knows I use VoIP. You should see the amount of junk mail I get for their telephone service. I spoke with a tech and they noted "I see you use VoIP" when looking at my account.
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Support a Young Author and Eat Healthy Sweets |
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 BoogeymanDrive it like you stole itPremium
join:2002-12-17
Seward, AK | Hmmm... It really stinks that ISP's are doing this and hiding it in obscure wording (in some cases) in a lengthy TOS. I bet if they just came out and told everyone, most mom and pop users probably wouldnt care, and the rest of us use adblock anyway.
I can see it causing problems for houses that only have one pc that everyone uses. Dad stays up friday night looking at porn while evryones asleep. Saturday morning junior goes to look at the Cartoon Network site and is greeted by butt plug ads. And thats one reason why this whole "targeted advertising" thing wont work as well as they think it will. Because its targetting the pc doing the web browsing, not the user in front of the pc. So unless they are using user accounts, Mom going to baking sites is getting tool ads, Dad going to sports sites is getting feminine hygene ads, Sis going to myspace is getting DragonBallZ ads and lil Brother going to Cartton Network is getting ads for Brittany's new album.
In all honesty though, I think they should figure out how much using my browsing behavior makes them a month, and then discount a percentage of that off the monthly bill for opting IN. Even if its only like $5, it seems a fair trade that way. Lose a little bit of perceived privacy for a discount on your bill. |
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Reviews:
 ·Mediacom
·RoadRunner Cable
| This is like 253rd on the list of things I'm concerned about I mean, so I get a few targeted ads. So what? I can deal with that, I'm good at ignoring ads. And maybe they'll come up with something more relevant to me, who knows?
And it's not like they're keeping any personal information about me, just some aggregrated statistics on the kinds of sites I visit. I don't see the privacy concerns.
I really don't get why this is a front-page-news on BroadbandReports.com level issue. |
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 justbitsMore fiber than ATT can handlePremium
join:2003-01-08
Chicago, IL | This is a big privacy concern. This would be similar to someone spying on you, noticing that you visit certain stores, keeping track of the general category of things you buy and you suddenly getting junk mail and TV advertisements related to the stuff you're already buying or looking at. |
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 Titus PulloI came, I saw, I slept
join:2004-06-26
kudos:1
 ·Embarq Now Centu..
| reply to MyDogHsFleas
said by MyDogHsFleas:I mean, so I get a few targeted ads. So what? I really don't get why this is a front-page-news on BroadbandReports.com level issue. Because experience teaches us that this is always how it starts. Privacy for profit first; privacy for nefarious purposes second. Think about the adage "give an inch, take a mile" for a few minutes, and then think about your government for a few minutes afterward.
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Reviews:
·Mediacom
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to Boogeyman
Re: Hmmm... If you're actually doing something on your PC you don't want your kids to see, get your own PC and put a password lock on it, or if you must share a PC, at least set up separate accounts for family members. That way each user will have their own sets of cookies. You should do these things regardless of what your ISP is doing about tracking, it's just good practice.
There will never be a "ad revenue" discount on your bill. Does your cable TV service give you a discount for the ads they sell on your channels? Do magazines give you a discount on subscriptions for the ads they run? No.
It would just confuse subscribers and be another thing for customer service to deal with. The ad revenue just gets flowed back into the company as another source of income besides subscriber fees. |
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 GlenQuagmireGiggidy Giggidy Giggidy GooPremium
join:2004-02-16
Grand Rapids, MI | reply to justbits
Re: This is like 253rd on the list of things I'm concerned about said by justbits:This is a big privacy concern. This would be similar to someone spying on you, noticing that you visit certain stores, keeping track of the general category of things you buy and you suddenly getting junk mail and TV advertisements related to the stuff you're already buying or looking at. Stores and Credit car companies already do that. Once you swipe your credit card stores keep that info on file. Then when they can track all of your purchases no matter where in the country you shop.
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Yes, its stuck in a windows this time. |
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 sbrookPremium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
Ottawa
kudos:4
·TekSavvy Cable
| Rogers Canadian Cable ISP Rogers has started injecting its own messages into HTTP data packets to bring up windows showing usage information. Just like the picture shown on this site a few months agow with an injected item onto a Google page.
While it's harmless enough for now, but what if Rogers decides it wants to inject its own advertising next, or inject other companies advertising to make more lucrative money.
The portal service is proving to be not very money making (after all @home tried with Excite and overspent itself into the explosion!) but this is better than portals, since you can inject this into ANY page! |
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Reviews:
·Mediacom
·RoadRunner Cable
1 edit | reply to justbits
Re: This is like 253rd on the list of things I'm concerned about said by justbits:This is a big privacy concern. This would be similar to someone spying on you, noticing that you visit certain stores, keeping track of the general category of things you buy and you suddenly getting junk mail and TV advertisements related to the stuff you're already buying or looking at. Ummm.. that happens now. And it's not "spying", that would be illegal. Credit card companies sell this information. If you have a supermarket discount card, they sell that information. Marketing companies take all kinds of demographic and public-record information and sell it. You get targeted ads all the time unless you're paranoid about it and put yourself off the grid on purpose.
This is another example of the delusion people here seem to have. I call it "Web sites are special, magic places." People here seem to think that because something is happening on the Web, normal rules and considerations don't apply. Well, they do. If people are doing business on the Web, it'll be like business outside the Web. They'll look to gather consumer information to do targeted advertising. This has been going on ever since direct mail advertising, long, long before the Web or TV or even radio existed.
Maybe I'm just not of the mindset of people here. I really don't have a problem with my generic product and market preference information being out there, in trade for me getting lower-cost access to many things I want to participate in. Advertising revenue is what makes a whole lot of content businesses fly. And that revenue increases the better targeted the advertising market is.
These people really don't care about your personally identifiable information (PII). They care about your demographic, your buying tendencies, your response to different kinds of advertising. So there really is little cause for privacy concerns, unless you think "privacy" includes "the ability to observe behavior of consumers in a market".
And what is the big deal about ads? Why are ads such an affont to people? You pay attention to them or you don't. Big freaking deal. I have no problem clicking close on a window, or hanging up the phone, or recycling junk mail, or deleting spam e-mail. All those things take up maybe 10 minutes a day, total. I spend more time shaving and brushing my teeth. |
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Reviews:
·Mediacom
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to Titus Pullo
said by Titus Pullo:said by MyDogHsFleas:I mean, so I get a few targeted ads. So what? I really don't get why this is a front-page-news on BroadbandReports.com level issue. Because experience teaches us that this is always how it starts. Privacy for profit first; privacy for nefarious purposes second. Think about the adage "give an inch, take a mile" for a few minutes, and then think about your government for a few minutes afterward. These are two completely different things that you have related together because of conspiracy fever.
Businesses want buying and ad-response information about people, so they can be more effective with their advertising spend. That has nothing to do with what the government may or may not want. The government could care less about your market behavior. |
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Titus PulloI came, I saw, I slept
join:2004-06-26
kudos:1 Reviews:
·Embarq Now Centu..
| said by MyDogHsFleas:said by Titus Pullo:said by MyDogHsFleas:I mean, so I get a few targeted ads. So what? I really don't get why this is a front-page-news on BroadbandReports.com level issue. Because experience teaches us that this is always how it starts. Privacy for profit first; privacy for nefarious purposes second. Think about the adage "give an inch, take a mile" for a few minutes, and then think about your government for a few minutes afterward. These are two completely different things that you have related together because of conspiracy fever. Businesses want buying and ad-response information about people, so they can be more effective with their advertising spend. That has nothing to do with what the government may or may not want. The government could care less about your market behavior. Well, unless you're suddenly ordering guns online  ...
And you know, turning anything resembling mistrust or being wary into "conspiracy fever" won't fly because enough people have learned how hard others work to turn words that convey simple concepts into a pejorative -- like the word "liberal" for example.
No one is claiming - at least I hope not - that these ISPs are in cahoots w/the Illuminati, only that it's another avenue of ingress for *possible* abuses of privacy, if you're so inclined to believe such abuses exist. I do.
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| What cookie from where ? I'm curious to know how they can get their cookie into your computer. Cookies are put on your computer by the web pages you open in your browser. If they are forging cookies and injecting them into into the traffic stream from the pages you visit, I can see where there are real problems. If not, then what is the big stink about ? If the web pages that you visit are co-operating with these advertisers, then guess what, you are already being tracked anyway. Nothing new going on here. |
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BoogeymanDrive it like you stole itPremium
join:2002-12-17
Seward, AK | reply to MyDogHsFleas
Re: Hmmm... Its well established that most BBR users know that user accounts and passwords are good ideas. But I'm talking about Joe Average. Its been my experience that even when average users set up user accounts, they are rarely used correctly. While visiting family a while back, I went to use my grandfathers pc and he just old me his account password. My aunt and 2 cousins also had thier own accounts, but everyone knew my grandfathers (admin) password and whenever thier account wouldnt let them do something, they logged into his and did it. The same situation goes on at my brothers house (who isnt related to the other family). I know its not everyone, but its been more common in my experience than the people who use them correctly.
I know they probably wont ever give an ad revenue discount, but my point was that if they did, it would give them a huge PR boost and make many people WANT to opt in to the service. It wouldnt even need to be monetary discount. For the people who actually use thier ISP email/webspace, a bump in storage would be enough for a lot of people to want to opt in. See, if they bundled it with something users wanted, most everyday users would opt in if they judged the pro to be better than the con. |
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BoogeymanDrive it like you stole itPremium
join:2002-12-17
Seward, AK | reply to MyDogHsFleas
Re: This is like 253rd on the list of things I'm concerned about I agree with you for the most part. I do feel uneasy having targeted ads, but it wouldnt bother me if in exchange for that, I get added features/reduced cost for my service.
On the other hand, ads DO bother me. For example: Theres one on NHL.com that fills the screen with a huge noisy flash overlay if you mouse over the banner (which is located at the top of the page between the articles and the links to get to other pages on the site).
Yes, it is rather trivial to just close it, ignore the ad, delete the spam, etc. But its still annoying and consumes time. |
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Reviews:
·Mediacom
·RoadRunner Cable
1 edit | reply to Boogeyman
Re: Hmmm... said by Boogeyman:Its well established that most BBR users know that user accounts and passwords are good ideas. But I'm talking about Joe Average. Its been my experience that even when average users set up user accounts, they are rarely used correctly. While visiting family a while back, I went to use my grandfathers pc and he just old me his account password. My aunt and 2 cousins also had thier own accounts, but everyone knew my grandfathers (admin) password and whenever thier account wouldnt let them do something, they logged into his and did it. The same situation goes on at my brothers house (who isnt related to the other family). I know its not everyone, but its been more common in my experience than the people who use them correctly. Yep, I've seen exactly the same thing. IMHO personal computers were a huge mistake. Making consumers the bit-level sysadmins of the most complex piece of gear in their house is really a terrible idea. See what we ended up with? Piracy, spam, phishing, botnets, DOS attacks, identity theft, fraud, exposing kids to porn, and the ability to abuse people anonymously. Great stuff, there.
We seem to be moving back towards a much more reasonable "cloud computing" architecture, where the PCs are really just nice powerful user interface boxes, and all the logic and data is outside of the PC, in "the cloud". See Google Apps for example. Now if they could just get away from the idea that users manage their own PCs, and start selling "cloud appliance" computers that are non-configurable by the consumer, maybe we'll see less of this.
I know they probably wont ever give an ad revenue discount, but my point was that if they did, it would give them a huge PR boost and make many people WANT to opt in to the service. It wouldnt even need to be monetary discount. For the people who actually use thier ISP email/webspace, a bump in storage would be enough for a lot of people to want to opt in. See, if they bundled it with something users wanted, most everyday users would opt in if they judged the pro to be better than the con.
Well, I suppose this might be attractive to you, and maybe a small circle of people. But I think the average person would say "huh? you want me to do what for what?" The customer service calls cost alone would probably piss away any revenue or good will this might create.
People are used to the reduced-cost-stuff-for-advertising business model. See radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, and even Google. A new business model that says "we'll give you XYZ for accepting advertising" I just can't see taking hold. |
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| Op-in could be a good thing This program could be a good thing if they allowed opt-in or a service plan of slower speeds maybe their "lite" packages. Allow this on those plans and get the service at that price. or a faster speed with these ads. It could be a good thing to gain more market share. |
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BoogeymanDrive it like you stole itPremium
join:2002-12-17
Seward, AK | reply to Killler Maxxx
Re: What cookie from where ? The issue is that the sites are NOT in collusion with the ISP, the ISP is looking at your data before it gets to its destination, and then looking at it again before it comes back to you.
And you get the opt out cookie by visiting the opt out site from the ISP (as far as I understand). |
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Reviews:
·Mediacom
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to Titus Pullo
Re: This is like 253rd on the list of things I'm concerned about said by Titus Pullo:Well, unless you're suddenly ordering guns online ... You raise an excellent point. The Government IS interested in illegal buying activity over the Internet. Illegal weapons, child porn, mail fraud, etc. So I should have said "the government could care less about your LEGAL market behavior".
And sorry if I hit a sore spot with the "conspiracy fever" comment. I'm all about mistrust and being wary. My point is, I just don't think tracking consumer behavior for ad targeting is something that deserves much wariness. |
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 KoolMoeAw ManPremium
join:2001-02-14
Annapolis, MD | I think it does need some wariness. The definition of what's legal can change in a heartbeat. It may not be illegal to search for Vegetarian Aliens now, but do you want the gov't to know you used to search for them before it was made illegal?
KM |
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