Charter To Customers: We’re Watching You And Cashing In

[Quote:]

NYT Bits scribe Saul Hansell (SAI 100 #29) confirms an earlier report that Charter Communications, the No. 4 cable company, has started warning its cable modem subscribers that it will start tracking all of the Web sites they visit. Charter (CHTR) will sell the data to a firm called NebuAd, which will use subscribers’ browsing history to target which ads they’ll see. Charter will test the system in four markets within a month and will then decide whether or not to roll it out to its nearly 3 million Internet subscribers, Hansell reports.

What’s the point? Charter portrays the move as an “enhancement” with which its subscribers would see better-customized ads. But in reality, it’s all about more money. NebuAd is willing to pay Internet providers “several dollars per subscriber per month,” Hansell reports.

And as usual it has an “opt-out” system - because they know if they do it properly, with an “opt-in” system, they’re not going to get a single soul interested in their “enhancements”.

Nebuad.com is already in all the lists that ship with this

RSS feed

Comments »

No comments yet.

Name (required)
E-mail (required - never shown publicly)
URI
Your Comment (smaller size | larger size)
You may use <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> in your comment.

indoor-dictatorial