In a letter in response to an inquiry made by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, telecom giant AT&T said it was considering ISP-level targeting. According to The New York Times' Saul Hansell,
AT&T expressed in its letter more interest in the controversial approach than other big Internet service providers. ISP-level targeting involves deploying a monitoring technology to capture where
users go on the Internet in order to serve targeted ads.
AT&T claims that it would deploy ISP targeting "the right way," meaning the advertising system would require customers to agree to
being monitored. The opt-in approach is certainly the preferred method of privacy watchdogs, if ISP-monitoring has to be tolerated at all. Currently, most companies that deploy ad targeting offer some
kind of opt-out, recording the behaviors of users without asking them first.
The Congressional committee requested information about the ad targeting practices of 33 companies after
reports emerged claiming that ISPs like Charter Communications were preparing to track users' surfing behavior through the ISP monitoring service NebuAd. Charter has since suspended its plans to use
the service.
Read the whole story at The New York Times »