Charter to spy on customers
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Great, so you can opt out, by entering personal information into an unsecured web form. Not good enough. Not only that, but if you want to clear your cookies (something a lot of web savvy people do on a regular basis), you need to go through the opt out process again.
- Submitted by MysteriousStranger on Tue, 05/20/2008 - 9:32pm.
- Terms: big brother | Charter | privacy | spying
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Charter Communications has started sending out notices to customers touting an “enhanced online experience”, except that for the most part, this “enhancement” serves only to provide revenue for the company and to spy on its customers. For a more in-depth explanation of what’s going on, check out this article.
Using something called deep packet inspection, they will begin to monitor the browsing habits of customers, and serve up targeted ads based on web activity. What does that mean to you? Well, every Web page you look at can be monitored by Charter, analyzed for content, and then Charter or one of its advertising affiliates will try to sell you stuff related to those pages.
It’s a little unclear where and how these ads will appear to customers, but the potential for ads on existing Web sites to be replaced by the ISP by their own ones is disturbing to say the least and may threaten net neutrality.
You can read what Charter have to say here, but here’s an interesting snippet:
Can I choose to opt out of this enhanced service?
Yes. As our valued customer, we want you to be in complete control of your online experience. If you wish to opt out of the enhanced service we are offering, you may do so at any time by visiting www.charter.com/onlineprivacy and following our easy to use opt-out feature. To opt out, it is necessary to install a standard opt-out cookie on your computer. If you delete the opt-out cookie, or if you change computers or web browsers, you will need to opt out again.
Yes. As our valued customer, we want you to be in complete control of your online experience. If you wish to opt out of the enhanced service we are offering, you may do so at any time by visiting www.charter.com/onlineprivacy and following our easy to use opt-out feature. To opt out, it is necessary to install a standard opt-out cookie on your computer. If you delete the opt-out cookie, or if you change computers or web browsers, you will need to opt out again.
Great, so you can opt out, by entering personal information into an unsecured web form. Not good enough. Not only that, but if you want to clear your cookies (something a lot of web savvy people do on a regular basis), you need to go through the opt out process again.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so outrageous if Charter were offering some sort of a discount for targeting ads at its customers, but I’ve heard no word of anything like that happening.
I know I don’t like being spied on, and if you don’t either, it might be time to ask some serious questions of your Internet provider.
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No, this isn't the same as Google, Amazon and the like. They place cookies on your computer that track you ontheir own sites and can target ads on their own sites or those of advertising affiliates, what Charter are doing is tracking everything you do and can target and serve ads in a great number more places.
Deep packet inspection consists of examining every packet of information you send or recieve through the Internet, sort of like your mail carrier reading every piece of mail you send or receive. What the other companies do is more like a single company keeping track of the mail you send to/recieve from them, which while bad, isn't quite the invasion of privacy as the former situation.
Also, deleting cookies in this instance won't help at all since all the data is stored server side, not on your computer. In fact, if you have opted out of Charter's spying and clear cookies, you'll have to opt out again, or they'll go right back to spying on you.
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Copied over from my comment on the Trib blog:
The cable companies are subject to franchise agreements of local governments. After some searching, I found this contact information:
SLO County and unincorporated cities: (805) 781-4357
San Luis Obispo, Bridgitte Elke, Principal Administrative Analyst: (805) 781-7151
These are general city contact numbers, I wasn’t able to quickly find the contact info for the departments/persons directly involved with cable franchising:
Morro Bay: (805) 772-6200 x5 (administration)
Atascadero: (805) 461-5000
Arroyo Grande: (805) 473-5414 (administration)
Paso Robles: (805) 227-7276 (city hall)California Public Utilities Commission: http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/puc/
Feel free to call the appropriate city or county contact for your service area and let them know that Charter’s inspection of all web traffic going through their network is NOT acceptable to you, and that you prefer your web browsing to remain unmonitored and unaltered by Charter.
When calling, make sure you speak to someone responsible for cable franchising agreements.
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sweet icon. i totally don't recognize it. =P
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thanks for the background
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"sweet icon. i totally don't recognize it"
-- like a Calvin with upstretched arm
...or a Calvin hurling, skywards; )
moquiti said,
Wed, 05/21/2008 - 3:05am - login or register to post comments | email this comment
Just like Google and Amazon (and now eBay) have been doing for, like, forever. My wife claims that her Mac does this too, on it's own!?
My suggestion is to mix up your browsing instead of trying to hide it. Also minimize the amount of information accessible to the spies:
turn off pop-ups and animations in your browser.
delete your cache, history and cookies daily, or better yet, disable caching and history entirely.