ISPs May Be Selling Your Web Clicks

Mozzarella writes "Could our ISPs be selling our click data without us even knowing it? It seems like the practice is happening a lot more than we realize, and can be tracked for each user. Complete Incorporated's CTO David Cancel told Ars Technica that his company (an internet research firm) licenses click information from ISPs for 'millions of dollars' to figure out how we use the web. From the article: 'He did not give a specific figure about what this broke down to in terms of dollars per ISP user, although someone in the audience estimated that it was in the range of 40 per user per month — this estimate was erroneously attributed to Cancel himself in some reports on the event. Cancel said that this clickstream data is 'much more comprehensive' than data that is normally gleaned through analyzing search queries.'"

Comments

Naive or purposely wrong?

[j_heisenberg]

What's wrong (after reading TFA):

The data is not sold with accompanying user name or information, but merely as a numerical user value. However, it is still theoretically possible to tie this information to a specific ISP account

only if the ISP leaks something, like a specific identifier (MAC?) or a cookie.

Cancel said that this clickstream data is "much more comprehensive" than data that is normally gleaned through analyzing search queries

However, it can't be tied to the user, so no target-advertising etc. can be done. (It's probably just useful for market research)

And now this one is one from the "No" department:

Of course, it's an established fact that if you surf the web, your surfing habits can be tracked by any site you happen to visit

So my bottom line: big difference between a target-marketer and a market research firm.
And the bottom line of the bottom line: is either Ars or "Cancel" on Goog's/Yahoo's/MSN's payroll?