ISP Web Tracking Dead As Net Eavesdropping CEO Resigns - Via Threat Level:

Online privacy scored a small victory this week as the CEO for controversial net eavesdropping firm NebuAD resigned just months after Congress successfully scared the country's ISPs into abandoning dreams of windfall profits from tracking their customers around the web.

Dykes's resignation can best be understood as the death -- if only temporary one -- of a scheme to track online users' every click and search in order to serve just the right ad at the right time - a service that companies will pay a premium for.

NebuAd's business model was to pay ISPs to let it install equipment to monitor where people surfed and what they searched on, in order to deliver targeted ads based on the user's profile. ISPs hungry to be more than just a railroad company warmed to the idea of new revenue.

But after one of the nation's largest ISPs, Charter Communication, announced plans to test NebuAd technology, the House Energy and Commerce committee became very interested whether tracking people's every move on the net violated federal law. The inquiry dealt a critical blow to the company, since it quickly became apparent that no ISP was going to take on a powerful House telecom committee to defend untested and clearly creepy technology.

Now NebuAd CEO and founder Bob Dykes resigned to take a job at VeriFone, a retail payment system company, just a day after the AP ran a slightly premature obituary for NebuAd, which sought to pay ISPs to let it spy on surfers' online habits in order to serve them targeted ads.

The company claimed to be all about the good words: transparency. notice, choice and consent. But inquiries by Congress revealed ISPs secretly tested the technology without telling customers and the company proved unable to explain how its 'miraculous opt-out' technology worked. It did claim to have a patent pending on the technology, but none was found in an online search. An report by watchdog groups revealed the company also violated key internet protocols and injected rogue code into packets coming from sites like Google.com.

With Dyke's departure, it's clear that in the United States at least, this sort of ISP tracking is not going to be condoned for at least a few years, and venture capital is likely to stay far away from similar ventures for a long time. (England has its own battle with a similar company called Phorm.)

Government spying, however, follows the "Do as I say, not as I do" rule of politics.

In fact, in July, Congress decided that the government should have the power to install NSA surveillance equipment in any American internet service or infrastructure -- whether that be a secret room in AT&T's internet switching facility or an automatic forwarder in Microsoft's Hotmail service.

See Also:

• Report: NebuAd Forges Packets, Violates Net Standards
• NebuAd Defends Murky System to 'Opt-Out' From Charter Snooping
• Charter Freezes Web Eavesdropping Plan - Update
• Lawmakers Target Second ISP for Web-Tracking Tech
• Can Charter Broadband Customers Really Opt-Out of Spying? Maybe Not
• Under Pressure, ISP Admits Secret Web Snooping in Kansas
• ISP Justifies, But Doesn't Explain Secret Customer Eavesdropping
• Leaked Report: ISP Secretly Added Spy Code To Web Sessions ...

(Read Original Article - Via Threat Level.)