Charter Has Second Thoughts On Targeted Ads Directed At Broadband Subscribers
This story was written by David Kaplan.
Score one for privacy advocates: Charter Communications (NSDQ: CHTR) is abandoning plans to place behavioral ads on web pages that are accessed by its broadband service subscribers, PC World reports. Charter had been testing a pilot program by behavioral targeting ad net NebuAd.
Charter and NebuAd have both come under fire from consumer rights groups Public Knowledge and Free Press, which accused the two of spying on users by manipulating internet protocols with man-in-the-middle attacks; on top of that, two congressional representatives, Ed Markey (D-Mass. and Joe Barton (R-Tx.) sent the St. Louis-based cable company a letter questioning the plan, which was first proposed in May. While Charter is washing its hands of the targeting effort, NebuAd was left to defend its actions, saying it allows users to opt-out at any time and only industry-standard cookies and does not internet protocols.
By David Kaplan