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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.'"
There is little new here. Companies such as http://www.hitwise.com/ have been purchasing raw traffic data for years. They place a box at switch level and monitor everything about everyone and the sell on the reports for profits. The last time I had a quote from them it was in the region of $28k to monitor footfall to a single site for a year. Access to the full data set can run into the hundreds of thousands.
If this is being done without users' consent, then it strikes me as being dangerously close to wiretapping, which is illegal.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
You all act so fuckin high and mighty - Privacy is a moot point to argue when you live in your parents basement.
You know I'm right
Son, your mother and I have said it before and we'll say it again: if you didn't have such a fixation on ostrich porn, we wouldn't have to monitor your net connection. When you're 18 and you have a place of your own then you can look at all the flightless bird porn you like, but not a moment sooner. Do you have any idea what it did to your little sister to come home and find you naked and covered in egg yolks with your head in a box of sand and feathers stuck up your ass?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
While a counterattack is possible there are two mitigating factors:
First, philosophically, it is always the course of greater wisdom to explore extinguishing the problem using passive resistance (eg. avoiding offending services). Sadly, this is rarely effective against a determined aggressor but it does prevent unnecessary conflict by establishing a baseline of just how determined the aggressor is.
Second, in terms of time, the information gathering industry is way ahead of us and the internet laws are written to be easily used against people who would interfere with their exploits.
All in all, though, data pool pollution would be an effective approach if the aggressor has been determined to be resolute and the legal aspect weren't so grim.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
For his part, David Cancel told Ars that he "strongly supports an increase in the methods and degree to which disclosure is communicated," not only for clickstream data but for any kind of data collected on users' personal surfing habits.
Nicely put. I'd even go so far as to suggest it's even nicer than what we typically hear during White House press conferences.
He stated that "all users should be informed explicitly when their data can be sold to a third party."
The tricky part. A nice sounding pronouncement, but it sidesteps the issue of whether they are, and if so, to what extent, etc. And it overlooks what we should expect, which is typically a progression starting with a scandal, followed by a Mistakes Were Made apology, followed by calls to action and the scattered efforts of those affected but who otherwise have little say in the matter, and if we're lucky, a legislator giving a There Oughta Be a Law speech before some subcomittee.
I've often wondered what the cable companies are doing with respect to TV watching. On the one hand, it seems perfectly reasonable that they could devise a system whereby they could collect statistics on my viewing habits and sell them to Nielsen's. On the other, I'm not aware of whether they can, have plans to, or already do. Maybe someone more knowledgable can clue me in.
It is WITH user consent via the 99.9%-unread EULA.
If the EULA enforces things that a reasonable person wouldn't expect to find in a contract of this type, the unreasonable elements of the EULA may be found unenforceable by the courts.
Whether the right to sell data relating to your Internet use to third parties something a reasonable person would expect is debatable. Someone could challenge those portions of the EULA covering click info, on the basis that they are not to be reasonably expected in an end user license covering a contract for Internet access.
The challenge wouldn't necessarily prevail in court, but it could be made. The legal theory behind this is that when one party holds a substantial bargaining advantage over the other, and has employed contractual language that is dense and lengthy, it is unreasonable to expect that the disadvantaged party will be able to spot every element of the contractual language. After all, the company can employ a lawyer to put all sorts of bizarre language into a contract, and most consumers are not schooled in such language, nor do they necessarily have the time to go through the language of each and every EULA. Thus, if the party with an advantage employs tricky language in the EULA, that language can be considered unenforceable.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ