Lawmakers Target Second ISP for Web-Tracking Tech - Via Threat Level:

ISPs seeking to find new ways to make money by profiling their customer's online habits are likely reconsidering after powerful House lawmakers turned their anti-tracking ire on a second large telecom in recent months.

In June, Charter Communications -- the nation's fourth-largest ISP --  shelved its plan to make money by letting others snoop on and categorize the web-surfing habits -- including searches -- of its customers, following a May inquiry from Congress about the plan.

This go round top members of the House Commerce committee, including chairman John Dingell (D-Michigan) and top Republican Joe Barton (R-Texas) and telecom subcommittee head Reps. Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) are targeting the Fortune 500 telecom company Embarq.

The lawmakers want to know whether the company informed its customers earlier this year that it was testing web-tracking technology that would chronicle their every move online. They also want to know whether the test of web-surveillance technology from NebuAd complied with federal communications law.

Monday's letter to Embarq comes as ISPs are trying to find ways to be more than just providers of pipes -- and trying to find new ways to raise revenues and control traffic on their network. These attempts include violating accepted internet protocol to return pages with ads when a user types in a nonexistent URL and sending fake packets to file sharers' computers in order to scale back their traffic usage. The latter tactic, adopted by Comcast to control BitTorrent video file sharing, is likely to draw an official rebuke from federal regulators in August.

Rep. Markey is clearly not waiting for answers to know what he thinks of such technology:

"Surreptitiously tracking individual users' Internet activity cuts to the heart of consumer privacy," Markey said in a written statement. "Embarq's apparent use of this technology without directly notifying affected customers that their activity was being tracked, collected, and analyzed raises serious privacy red flags."

Embarq, a Fortune 500 telecom bundling company spun-off from Sprint that employs some 18,000 people, tested technology from NebuAd, a controversial advertising firm that collects data about users from inside their ISPs and uses those profiles to serve targeted ads on pages around the net. Third-party advertising networks such as DoubleClick collect some of the same information, but only do so from select web pages. By contrast, NebuAd sits in the pipe and can see everywhere a user goes.

NebuAd pays ISPs to install sniffer boxes on the network, which then categorize users as it reads the traffic between a user's computer and websites. According to one report, NebuAd also adds rogue JavaScript to pages from Google and Yahoo as part of its tracking technology.

Some advocacy groups and privacy lawyers argue that NebuAd's snooping on web traffic in order to determine what ads to serve to a user violate federal wiretapping laws. NebuAd disagrees saying it throws away URLs as profiles are generated and that its pseudonymous profiles could not be reverse-engineered to identify a person. They also say users can opt-out, though its unclear exactly how that works or how effective it is.

Specifically, the congressmen want to know where the test happened, how many subscribers were affected, whether customers were told ahead of time, and why the test was opt-out rather than opt-in.

While Embarq's privacy page no longer makes mention of the test, the opt-out page remains live.

The congressmen want answers to their questions by July 21.

NebuAd said questions about the trial were best answered by Embarq.

An Embarq spokeswoman said the company had gotten the letter and was "reviewing it for the appropriate response."

Note: This story was updated to include responses from Embarq and Nebuad.

Photo: Congressman Edward Markey

See Also:

• Report: NebuAd Forges Packets, Violates Net Standards
• Charter Freezes Web Eavesdropping Plan - Update
• Stop the Blocking, Feds to Tell Comcast
• FCC Gets an Earful From Open-Net Defenders at Stanford

(Read Original Article - Via Threat Level.)