Charter Communications will not go forward with a controversial plan to monitor its customers’ Internet surfing habits in order to target advertising at them. The cable company, which is the fourth biggest here in the US of A, was slated to begin tests in four smallish cities (including Fort Worth) of a system that would have monitored Internet traffic using deep packet inspection. Naturally, knee-jerk privacy advocates lost their minds, and the more tech-savvy (like us here) just didn’t like the idea of Charter snooping on our activities.
The scheme was to be carried out by NebuAd, which feels the public and politicians need to be “educated” about just how, dare I say, nebulous its ad system is. That is, it doesn’t know who you are, but it damn sure knows what you’re looking at.
I wonder where does evil, evil Comcast fit into all of this.