Charter to Insert Ads into Web Pages Its Broadband Customers Visit

Submitted by MacRonin on May 14, 2008 - 12:50pm.

Charter to Insert Ads into Web Pages Its Broadband Customers Visit - Via Threat Level:

Charter Communications, one of the nation's largest ISPs, plans to track the web surfing habits of its customers in order to insert its own ads into web pages being visited by its customers, making it the first large American ISP to inject content into traffic its customers pay them to deliver.

In letters being sent to its 2.7 million high speed internet customers, Charter is billing its new ad insertion program as an 'enhancement' for customers' web surfing experience. The letters were first reported by BroadbandReports.com user on Sunday.

Browsing the web can become more like flipping through your favorite magazine, where you see ads that are appealing to you and enhance your enjoyment and the utility of the experience.

Users can opt out of the system, but have to give their full name and address to get an opt-out cookie. The process would have to be repeated for every browser on every computer in a home to block the service, and would have to be reset if cookies are ever deleted.

Charter is entering tricky legal and political territory. The company claims that the program won't show users more ads than they saw before – which means that Charter plans to overwrite the ads from sites like Wired.com. Such a move could easily lead to lawsuits.

Additionally, by using a third party to insert ads into a web page, Charter is creating a single vulnerability point for all websites visited by Charter's subscribers. An intrepid black hat hacker could find a way to infiltrate the ad server and instantly turn nearly any website on the internet into a malware server.

Charter's move also comes at a sensitive political moment for ISPs, as Congress and the Federal Communications Commission revisit 'net-neutrality – the idea that ISPs should treat all content fairly and maintain the end-to-principle, which holds that the network is dumb and the intelligence lies with the servers and computers attached at the edges.

The move also highlights the desperation of ISPs who are finding that being in the traffic delivery business – simply being a dumb pipe – isn't as lucrative or as exciting as being a content provider. For instance, ISPs like Earthlink and Verizon are now redirecting requests for non-existent domains to pages with ads, while others are talking about ways to charge companies like YouTube higher fees to put their content on the fast lane to subscribers.

Charter says it will not be tracking personal information, such as medical records, and that letters to its subscribers explaining the program are going out on a rolling basis.

Charter's privacy policy already gives the company large leeway to buy commercial data about its subscribers and sell aggregate traffic data to marketers.

Charter did not respond to THREAT LEVEL's attempt last year to catalog the data retention and privacy practices of the nation's largest ISPs.

THREAT LEVEL will be speaking with Charter at 2:00 pm PST, and will update soon afterward.

See Also:

(Read Original Article - Via Threat Level.)


Bookmark/Search this post with: