On Second Thought... NebuAd Not Really Dead... Re-Emerges In The UK Under An Assumed Name

from the nice-one! dept

After writing about how NebuAd had shut down, a commenter pointed out this wasn't quite true. Instead, it appears the company has just re-appeared under a different name in the UK... where officials have ruled that clickstream tracking behavioral advertising can be legal (though that's gotten the UK into trouble with the EU). Apparently, NebuAd had opened a UK office, and with the shutdown of US operations, the UK office re-branded as Insight Ready Ltd., but it appears to be the same basic company, including same employees. And the Insight Ready domain name was registered by NebuAd....

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Ding Dong, NebuAd Is Dead

from the so-much-for-that-plan dept

While it took many months since Congress made it clear that NebuAd's somewhat sneaky clickstream tracking/behavioral advertising plans were almost certainly illegal, it appears that the company has finally shut down completely. The similar Phorm remains in operation in the UK, but is still facing significant legal scrutiny and has been running around trying to convince everyone that it's system doesn't violate anyone's privacy. Either way, there's a good lesson to be learned: while it may seem that individuals don't pay all that much attention to their privacy rights, if you cross the line and abuse what people feel is sacred, it's going to come back to bite you.

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New FTC Chair's Views On Google, Broadband Competition And Behavioral Advertising

from the sounds-decent-so-far... dept

We've been receiving a series of different reports from different folks about a recent interview that new FTC boss, Jon Leibowitz, gave on CSPAN. Leibowitz has been in the FTC for a while, though, he's yet another former entertainment industry lobbyist in the administration (he was VP of Congressional Affairs for the MPAA from 2000 to 2004). So far, however, he seems to be taking quite reasonable positions on a variety of topics (though, some questionable views on other areas). Questioned about Google's dominance in the market (something that the FTC has been investigating for a while now), he pointed out that dominance is "the American way" and not necessarily an antitrust violation:

Google has certainly has a dominant position in search advertising. There's no doubt about that. From our perspective, just having a dominant position doesn't in any way violate the law. It's if you do something -- as the Justice Department in the 1990s alleged that Microsoft did -- to exclude competitors illegally, that's when it becomes a problem.

If you get to a dominant position or a monopoly position by virtue of your own acumen, that's really the American way.

Then there's broadband competition, where he definitely does appear to be concerned about the lack of competition and the lack of transparency from current broadband providers:

We believe consumers need to have notice and consent about what they're getting. It's very, very important that these providers tell consumers about the speed they're getting, and whether (ISPs) are making any types of management decisions in terms of the network that affect consumers....

In a perfect marketplace where you had more competitors, you wouldn't need the government necessarily to be terribly involved. Particularly in the consumer protection area, we have a big roll to play. Broadband is a deregulated product. That's good, we like deregulation generally. But when you have deregulation, you also have law enforcement to make sure people do the right thing.

And, then, there's the question of behavioral advertising, where he believes that opt-in, rather than opt-out, makes a lot of sense:

I think some of the more enlightened companies do do opt-in. I think a lot of them don't. I think the better practice is always opt in.

On the whole, then, he seems to not be too quick to bash companies for being successful, and seems to recognize that competition and transparency are important issues. Those are all good things. There are some fears however, that he's a bit quick on the trigger when it comes to regulating over that behavioral advertising issue, and doesn't seem to mind metered broadband, so long as customers know what they're getting.

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UK Officials Accused Of Colluding With Phorm

from the that-would-not-be-good dept

While the US quickly condemned clickstream tracking as a likely violation of privacy, many were quite surprised when UK officials went in the other direction, suggesting that Phorm's tracking was legal. The European Commission was so annoyed by this that it's taking legal action against the UK for privacy violations. But, still, many people are wondering why the UK government said something like Phorm was legal... and now accusations are coming out that it's because UK government officials let Phorm take part in writing the policy. There are a bunch of incriminating emails between the Home Office and Phorm, including one where officials ask Phorm execs if they would be "comforted" by the position the gov't was about to take. In another, the officials ask Phorm to review the document and give feedback, prior to the gov't releasing the actual policy. Talk about regulatory capture... The government, for its part, claims that people are misreading the emails, but it's difficult to see how the emails can be misread when they blatantly ask Phorm to review the document, and inquire whether the company and its partners will be comforted by the ruling.

Update: On top of this, it appears that Phorm is now lashing out at critics, claiming that they're "smear merchants" and "privacy pirates." That sounds convincing...

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Did AT&T Lie To Congress About Using Behavioral Advertising?

from the questions-questions-questions dept

Congress is apparently holding hearings this week about behavioral advertising -- the controversial online practice of targeting ads to people based on where they surf. In the past, Congress has suggested that firms such as NebuAd that do this are breaking the law. However, it appears that AT&T may have been less than truthful in its own testimony. The company took a hardline stance against behavioral advertising that wasn't clear and set up as an opt-in approach. Yet, as MediaPost notes, a top behavioral advertising company named Audience Science, lists AT&T as a customer and has a testimonial on the site. When a Congressional Rep asked AT&T's policy VP who was testifying about the company (accidentally calling it "Audio Science"), AT&T claimed it didn't have a relationship with the company. When the MediaPost reporter asked Audience Science about all of this, AT&T's logo suddenly disappeared from the company's website.

Now, it seems quite likely that this is all a rather innocent mistake -- and the AT&T VP, Dorothy Attwood, simply didn't know about the company's relationship with Audience Science. AT&T is a big company, and certainly the left hand might not always know what the right hand is doing -- but that's a big part of the problem here. Even when an official company policy might be to avoid these sorts of things, there's as half decent chance that someone lower down on the totem pole has signed off on a deal to make use of these technologies.

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Europe Begins Legal Action Against The UK For Allowing Phorm To Proceed

from the a-little-privacy,-please dept

We were quite surprised when the UK gave a basic approval of Phorm's clickstream tracking/behavioral advertising effort -- despite widespread consumer outrage that their internet surfing was being tracked and sold for advertising purposes. And given that simple approval, Phorm has been looking to aggressively expand. However, it appears that other officials may have a different idea. The European Commission has "started legal action" against the UK for allowing Phorm to proceed, saying that it seemed likely to violate European privacy rules. Who knows if this will actually go anywhere, but it seems pretty clear that the rather widespread mistrust of Phorm is making sure that it's not able to do much at all without additional scrutiny.

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Anti-Spyware Companies Debate Blocking ISP-Injected Advertising

from the the-battle-continues dept

With a growing number of ISPs using services from companies like Phorm and NebuAd to inject ads into your web browsing based on your surfing habits, anti-spyware companies are starting to take notice and debate whether or not they should start blocking some of these activities. While there's no downloaded software, these services all use cookies to track your surfing habits, and anti-spyware offerings could certainly step in and block those cookies or more proactively warn users that their surfing data is being used in this manner. Considering how hard Phorm has worked to shed the "spyware" label it had been given in a previous life, the company can't be too pleased to hear about this development. Of course, it's probably more concerned with questions being raised about whether or not its service is even legal.

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Now Consumer Groups Want A 'Do Not Track' List

from the and-how-would-that-work-exactly? dept

While the "Do Not Call" list in the US has mostly been successful (with some glaring exceptions) in cutting down on intrusive telemarketing calls, it has kicked off a somewhat annoying trend for consumer groups to demand all sorts of other "Do Not X" lists. Popular for a while was the idea of a "Do Not Spam" list, which most folks realized would be almost impossible to administer. Now, some consumer groups are pushing for a similar "Do Not Track" list, following all of the recent stories about behavioral marketing and clickstream tracking. This list would, its proponents claim, let people opt-out of allowing advertisers to track them. Again, though, this idea would be nearly impossible to manage in real life. In most cases, advertisers have no real idea of who they're tracking anyway -- so it's difficult to see how one would "opt-out" of such data collection in the first place. It would seem that a much more efficient (and effective) solution is to just let the technology evolve to the point that users can block such tracking activities on their own. In many cases, that's already possible. On top of that, as companies like Phorm are discovering, the public outcry against even the possibility of doing something bad concerning clickstream tracking will hopefully keep these firms in check.

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No Targeted Ads For AIDS & Cancer Patients; But Drug Addicts & Dead People Are Fair Game

from the you-gotta-have-some-standards dept

Last month, we discussed how behavioral targeting of advertising risked seriously creeping people out, if it reached that "uncanny valley" of being a little too targeted, but not yet useful. It seems that behavioral targeted advertising firms are trying to deal with this by working together to come up with a set of standards covering what topics are taboo when it comes to targeted advertising. Cancer and AIDS patients, rejoice. Advertisers have decided not to target you. However, if you're old, addicted to drugs, religious, a convicted felon or dead, you're fair game. Dead? Well, the ad group says it meant the "death" category to be for targeting ads at relatives making funeral plans ("Death in the family? Get a casket for 20% off!"). How thoughtful of those advertising groups.

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Phorm Goes On The Offensive To Defend Its Ad Program On Privacy Questions

from the but-do-you-believe-them dept

Last month, we wrote about the plan by a variety of UK-based ISPs to use all of your clickstream data to target ads to you as you surfed. That is, if you were surfing a golf site and then went and checked CNN, the system would still know that you liked golf and might serve up golf ads on CNN. At least that's the benign version of it. There are some serious questions raised by this. First of all, many people are likely to be uncomfortable with the idea that their ISP is watching what they do and then using it to target ads. Even worse, the company that the ISPs were partnering with to do all of this had previously been known as a spyware firm.

Phorm is now aggressively defending its reputation, insisting once again that it will keep all of the data it collects anonymized. However, while it says this and explains how it will try to anonymize the data, the company fails to address the fact that just about every time a company has tried to create an anonymized data set, it doesn't take long for someone to de-anonymize it. The company just assumes that it really can keep the data anonymous, when there are serious doubts as to whether or not that's really possible.

To its credit, the company isn't ignoring some of the complaints and has just done interviews with both the BBC and The Register to answer some of the concerns raised. Thankfully, both interviews do probe fairly deeply and ask some tough questions, and the Phorm execs answer each question directly. They claim that they were never "spyware" providers, only adware, but admit that the definition got blurred, which was why (they claim) they got out of the business. That sounds good until you look at some of the details about the company's former products, and the fact that it made a rather nasty rootkit injector.

That said, the execs do answer a bunch of questions about the privacy issues, noting that they're being audited by two separate firms to ensure they live up to the privacy promises. The clickstream data is immediately deleted and all the profiling is done at the ISP, not by Phorm, who is merely serving up the ads based on the profile kicked back by the ISP. While it's good to see the execs from Phorm willing to answer these questions, the company's history and the entire concept of what's being done still seems rather questionable. Phorm's insistence that this will actually decrease advertising seems like little consolation (and difficult to believe).

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