A privacy lawsuit against behavioral
targeting company Adzilla and its partners was quietly settled late last month, according to court records.
Adzilla, which stopped operating in the U.S. in 2008, did not acknowledge any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, said
Scott Kamber, the lawyer who brought the case. He added that Adzilla agreed that it will "require opt-in consent of consumers or any consent that may be required to avoid violation of the Electronic
Communications Privacy Act" should it resume ISP-based targeting in the U.S. Terms were otherwise confidential.
The settlement leaves unresolved whether it's legal to target Web users based on
data purchased from Internet service providers. Now shuttered company NebuAd still faces a lawsuit for
allegedly working with ISPs to collect data about users' Web-surfing activity in order to serve them targeted ads.
The case against Adzilla was filed last year by Richmond, Va.-resident Susan Simon, who alleged that Adzilla, her ISP -- Internet service
provider Continental Visinet Broadband -- and other companies violated a host of laws, including the federal wiretap statute. Simon, who sought class-action status, brought the case in the northern
district of California.
She said in the lawsuit that she first noticed Adzilla in June 2007, when she realized that her ISP was assigning her different IP addresses from those it used previously.
After investigating, she determined that the new addresses belonged to Adzilla, which had allegedly started tracking her online. The lawsuit does not allege that Adzilla served her any ads, only that
it tracked her.
Simon said in her complaint that she was never notified about the tracking and didn't consent to it.