We've been talking a lot about behavioral advertising firm NebuAD, who pay ISPs to host deep packet inspection hardware that tracks your browsing activity, including which websites you visit and how long you spend there. The supposedly anonymous data (we discussed this with their CEO last February), is then used to deliver ads more tailored to your interests (by the way, you appear to have an unhealthy obsession with Ralph Macchio).

Aside from the obvious privacy concerns, there's several problems with this model so far. ISPs aren't being clear with their customers that this is going on -- burying the announcement in fine print. Our attempts to discuss these services with ISPs haven't gone well -- most don't want to go on the record. The New York Times hasn't had any better luck:Comforting! While NebuAD says they have "tens of dozens" of ISP clients, we've so far only identified a handful (Embarq, WOW, Knology and CenturyTel). NebuAD's CEO tells the Times that customers worried about this service can opt-out. But while NebuAD's opt-out system prevents you from getting targeted ads, it doesn't prevent you from having your data collected and sold (the same obviously being true for ad blocking technology).

Of course ISPs have already been selling your clickstream data to websites like Compete for some time (one ISP exec suggests to us they pull in about $5 per subscriber, per month), so the idea of using your browsing history as a revenue stream is not new. But ISPs have been equally silent about that business model.