The Washington Post is reporting a story today that Embarq, an ISP in Kansas has been using the same technology that Charter Communications was pressured to drop just weeks ago. Apparently Embarq didn't tell their subscribers about this, and Congress is fast considering this and similar uses of deep packet inspection technology to perform these types of actions wiretapping. They have a link right on their home page listed "your privacy rights", but apparently that is just for show.
This is the first of their "five privacy principles" that apparently allow them to look at where their customers travel on the web.
EMBARQ creates, obtains, and uses your personal information to provide you the products and services you order, and to present you with product and service offerings that we believe may interest you
This is their definition of personal information.
Personal information is information that is directly associated with a specific person such as his or her name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, activities, and personal preferences.
We collect personal information about users of our products or services in the normal course of our business. This is how we know where to send you a bill for service...
Or an ad for something you may want.
All of their references to cookies in the privacy policy relate to cookies on the Embarq site, and mention nothing of the types of cookies used in the NebuAd realm. I am usually the last one to think that congress does much effectively, but perhaps this will be the nail in the coffin of this technology and stop other ISP's from getting the same idea. These types of privacy mishaps where companies had a privacy policy not outlining these types of activities, but thought it was their god given right to do so have gotten several companies in trouble with the FTC for unfair and deceptive trade practices, and a nice visit form the auditors biannually for the next 20 years. I'm hoping Embarq is next, and it serves as a lesson to other ISPs.
No comments:
Post a Comment