NebuAd makes meal of opt-out cookie As it prepares for a Congressional pow-wow on the "Privacy Implications of Online Advertising," behavioral ad targeter NebuAd has vowed to eat its infamous opt-out cookie. "NebuAd is...developing a network-based opt-out mechanism that is not reliant on web browser cookies," reads a company press release. "Leveraging this …
First, NebuAd does -not- say that its newer Opt-Out method will prevent the users data from being provided by the ISP. In fact, the only thing they will say is that it will "honor their opt-out choices in a more persistent manner." The perceived evil of NebuAd isn't the targeted ads, it isn't even NebuAd so much -- it's that an ISP is providing everything that I see and say to an untrusted 3rd party.
Second, NebuAd slipped in some other hard news. They said, "NebuAd previously eliminated the page-appended mechanism for pixel tag distribution, referred to in recent media reports." In other words, they're no longer piggybacking on www.google.com, www.yahoo.com, or www.msn.com in order to force-load the cookies that identify profiled users to their partner ad networks.
Robb Topolski
PS: Special thanks to TheRegister and Cade Metz who has done a great job covering this story!
I like the "Leveraging this advanced technology..." bit. What bull! Like attaching an attribute to a customer's account is so hard no-one has ever quite managed to do it before.
It couldn't possibly be that they don't want you to stay opted out could it? No, that'd be dishonest of them, wouldn't it?
The boffin, because obviously NebuAd needs lots of them for doing such difficult stuff.
It turns out NebuAd has been anonymizing its data all along. I don't know if it makes a difference legally, but it does change the aesthetics of the system. They make a one-way hash out of IP addresses, and pass anonymous information to advertisers tied to the hash.
I'm sure they're doing something totally illegal, but there's a certain evil cleverness to the system that I admire (no, this is not an endorsement.)
I don't know why the movie pirates are so torqued about NebuAd, as it doesn't seem to affect them.
' "The purpose and techniques of true wiretapping are really very different from tracking someone on the internet," says Jonathan Kramer, a telecoms-savvy attorney with the Kramer Telecom Law Firm. '
No they bleedin' well aren't. In both cases you are invading the punter's privacy for your benefit and to the disadvantage of the punter. (If it weren't so, they'd be happy to offer an opt-in. Duh!) Does this twat think that phishing for someone's online bank details is "really very different" from nicking their chequebook and forging their signature?
If this is what passes for telecoms-savvy amongst lawyers then a whole lotta stuff suddenly starts to make sense.
Would this require anything more than a couple sentences added to the ISP's terms and conditions of service saying something along the lines of by using our service you agree to opt-in to the monitoring service, and you further agree that clicking on the "I agree" button counts as a signature on a written consent form for this agreement and all terms therein?
Most online terms and conditions documents that I've read through already include something along the lines of "oh, by the way, you also agree that the service provider can change these terms at any time, and that updating the terms and conditions webpage counts as proper notice of any changes."
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