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Comcast To Stop Tracking Users' Web Habits

Posted by Hemos on from the you-don't-mean-my-credit-card-numbers dept.

jdavidb writes "According to this article, Comcast will no longer keep track of what its users view online." Good.

6 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Lawmaker Questions Comcast's Web Tracking by iiii · · Score: 4, Informative
    This might have something to do with it.

    The Washington Post has this article about how Rep. Ed Markey is looking into Comcast's collection of personal internet usage info. Hey, this guy must read SlashDot!!

    Markey, D-Mass., in a letter to Comcast President Brian Roberts, wrote that he was concerned about "the nature and extent of any transgressions of the law that may have resulted in consumer privacy being compromised."

    Also, Comcast has a new press release in response to the fracas.

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  2. More Info by BrianGa · · Score: 3, Informative

    In response to previous claims of Comcast intercepting packets, the company pledged today "to immediately stop recording the Web browsing activities of each of its 1 million high-speed Internet subscribers." This after the Associated Press announced on Tuesday that the company "has started recording the Web browsing activities of each of its 1 million high-speed Internet subscribers without notifying them of the change."

  3. Thanks slashdot by $carab · · Score: 5, Informative

    Big Kudos to the moderator (timothy) who was willing to take a chance on an anonymous bugtraq tip. I just got off the phone with Comcast tech support, and they said, essentially, that if this information had never leaked out, they would still be monitoring my internet usage.

    Just looking at the original article right here, I was very suprised by all the "This is not news posts" that got modded +5.

    Quite simply, this is news, and this is not a simple proxy server either, according to Comcast tech support. Slashdot took a big risk in posting this story, and I think everyone that hollered about the original story being a bust owes a big apology to timothy.

    Anyways,
    It's good Comcast has finally seen the light (or have had it thrust in their faces), but I am still looking for a new ISP. I think this image really explains why:
    Curious jumps everywhere
    High ping times

    I'm afraid Comcast just isn't cutting it any more. Since my area is a Comcast monopoly, I tihnk its time that we pressured our public officials to break up this monopoly.

    As I told the rep: "I hope you realize that if a competitor, ANY competitor, breaks up your cable monopoly here, you will lose all your market share."
    And he said:
    "Yeah, I know"

  4. Re:Privacy, finally! by Digital11 · · Score: 3, Informative

    As if this hasn't been covered enough... But ISP's inherently track users. Pretty much every request is logged, its part of the business, get used to it. However, its not the tracking thats the problem, its what they do with it. If all that information does is sit in a log file until subpoena'd (or until the end of time, whichever comes first) then it does no harm. But ComCast was sharing (read: selling) the information to its valued associates. That's a big dirty no-no.

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  5. Re:Proxies? Why? by B1 · · Score: 3, Informative


    We don't need that. Web surfers already have something like that on a personal, local level. It's called web cache.

    One of the benefits of going through a caching proxy is that the cache is centralized, and available to everybody. This can amount to a huge upstream bandwidth savings for an ISP.

    If ten customers go directly to CNN.com, the ISP will download CNN.com from its upstream provider ten times--the fact that customer A visits the site doesn't help customer B, since their browser caches are private. For that matter, if customer A switches between Netscape and IE, he will have to download the page again, since each browser maintains its own independent cache.

    With ten customers going through a transparent caching proxy, the ISP caches the page once, and serves it from the cache ten times. This is a huge savings on upstream bandwidth, and improves performance for everybody. CNN.com sees less load on their server, visitors load the CNN website faster, and customers visiting MSNBC.com have more upstream bandwidth available.

  6. Re:Anonymizer? by TheAwfulTruth · · Score: 4, Informative

    Unfortunately "anonymizers" aren't too anonymouse these days...

    http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50371, 00 .html

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