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Comcast To Stop Tracking Users' Web Habits
jdavidb writes "According to this article, Comcast will no longer keep track of what its users view online." Good.
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Good.
sulli
RTFJ.
Comcast Executive Vice President Dave Watson said Tuesday that the company was recording no more information about its customers than is common in the industry and no more than needed to optimize its network.
"How else are we going to keep our customers if we don't have blackmail material?"
I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me--and we both winked.
From the article:
In response to the AP's coverage, Rep. Ed Markey, an aggressive privacy advocate in Congress, pressed Comcast President Brian Roberts in a letter Wednesday about the recording. Markey said the company's action could be in violation of federal law.
Sounds like they are just pre-empting a move by the FCC instead of acting benevolent.
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
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.
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
What the story said:
Comcast said in a statement that it will stop storing the information "in order to completely reassure our customers that the privacy of their information is secure."
After using the MBA -> English translator on Babelfish, we get:
Oh shoot, you cought us, so we will pretend we care about you. HAHA, we will just find another way to treat y'all like cattle. BTW: Please don't sue me.
This is like riding down the road with Guido (sorry all italians) who says..."Ya know punk, I'm going to kill you." He pulls out his gun and gets ready to pull the trigger, when Guido sees a cop car pull along side. Guido promptly puts away his gun.
Do you:
A) Say, "Hey Guido is a great guy...see he didn't kill me. He must not be so bad after all.
B) Think Guido is a scumbag. He would have killed me if not for the threat of the cop. I don't think I'll continue to associate with Guido. In fact I think I'll just out of the truck right now...
If you picked A, please drink the Koolaid now.
Comcast and a whole host of other unethical companies don't give a hoot about you. Sure they might not rape you this week, but as soon as they can get away with it, they will.
With our Gvmt from, by and for Big business, these occurances are going to happen more often. And don't expect to see the cop that saved Guido. Gvmt doesn't have the funds to protect the little guy anymore.
Cheers!
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"
Hmmm... this may be off-topic, but...
.com job, we were developing software that would, among other things, collect and store demographic info from its users (whatever the users entered in certain demographic fields in the software options/properties, IIRC).
At my first
However, our assertion was that the data we collected could not be used to trace use of the software back to an individual. That is, we were collecting data anonymously for its aggregate value, only.
In order to make this claim, we planned to subject ourselves to an audit of our security by some third-party company who, supposedly, was good and well-known for this kind of audit.
The audit was supposed to verify that the data was stored in such a way as to make it impossible to trace back to the end user, that the security of our data from external attack and also to ensure that our internal policies were adequate (e.g., that only appropriate employees had access to the data and/or the systems that stored that data, that only certain employees had the ability to grant other employees access, that strict policies were in place regarding the change of such priviledges, etc.).
In light of this, I often wonder when companies claim "we're only using personal information for $X" or "we're doing this to ensure the privacy of our customers"
*) do they really need to collect the personal info to do $X?
*) have they gone through an audit to verify that this private info is secure?
*) if not, why not?
Actually, because Me.jaded = True, I think I know the answers to these questions, but it still doesn't stop me from wondering.
Anyway, I'm glad Comcast will stop collecting this info, but it sounds like someone saying "I'm going to stop hitting you now. Aren't I wonderful?"
-- D.
You know... I heard Bob Edwards mention this as one of the 30 second news bits on Morning Edition this morning.
Coincidince? Somehow I think not. It's outlets like that that bring news to the many users of Comcast who DON'T read slashdot and aren't geeks, but occasionally enjoy a little evil goat pr0n on the side. And they vote.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Unfortunately "anonymizers" aren't too anonymouse these days...
, 00 .html
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50371
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!