Wide Open West Sued For Snoopvertising Suit claims WOW lied to Congress about NebuAD You might recall that before snoopvertising agency NebuAD flamed out spectacularly, cable operator Wide Open West (WOW) tested the user-tracking technology on their customers -- without telling anybody about it. When asked by the press about the tests, WOW of course denied to comment. Ultimately WOW, Charter, Embarq and all of NebuAD's clients faced a public relations disaster when their quiet tracking of your online behavior became public, so they suspended their efforts. For its part, WOW is now facing a class action in Chicago according to Courtroom News: The only named defendant is WideOpen West Finance LLC (WOW). The class claims WOW gave NebuAd virtually unlimited access to the personal information of at least 330,000 people. The information included credit reports, political affiliations, job searches and even movie rental choices. NebuAd paid WOW for each person they spied on, and used the information to deliver customized ads based on people's Internet search preferences, the class claims. Interestingly, the lawsuit claims that WOW lied to Congress in August of 2008 about the depth of their information sharing, and lied to customers about the usefulness of their "opt out" policy. NebuAD used deep packet inspection technology to track user website visits (down to the second), in the hopes of then targeting users with ads more relevant to their interests. ISPs and the ad industry still want to deploy the technology, but it's pretty clear their second attempt will need to actually factor in the privacy concerns of their customers.
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 | | up yours this is what happens when u become a customer of a crap company that cant generate revenue from their crappy core products due to continuous subscriber decline | |
|  woody7Premium
join:2000-10-13
Torrance, CA | hmmm..... ooo $hit is all I can say 
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BlooMe | |
| prack
join:2003-08-31
Columbus, OH | ... and so it begins I have an acquaintance who works in the Ohio AG office and I was told that they are looking at filing a suit as well. This was a few months ago, so maybe it's on the back burner. But, between Ohio, Michigan and Illinois running huge state budget deficits, I bet all three will try to cash in on this.
The best think WOW can do is offer some freebies to its subscribers and say, "I'm sorry" and hope that gets some good play.
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1 edit | Re: ... and so it begins said by prack:~snip~ The best think WOW can do is offer some freebies to its subscribers and say, "I'm sorry" and hope that gets some good play. IMHO, if these companies actually offered some value for the subscriber, say applying half of the earned revenue from 'snoopvertising' as a credit towards the customer's bill, and making it opt-in, they would probably find a large percentage of their customers would happily opt-in. That way the company wins, the customer wins, and the ads still get shown. | |
| | | | | Re: ... and so it begins The problem is the deep packet inspection is on all the time on all connections and opt-out opt-in means nothing. They can't distinguish between those they can track and those they can't until after they've tracked.
The whole technology is immensely scary because once it's implemented it's about 1 week before law enforcement plugs into the systems and starts monitoring everyone. Won't be long after that before you start getting speeding tickets in the mail for admitting to speeding on a forum post. Cities gotta get their revenue after all. | |
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2 edits | Snoopvertising The Snoopvertising battle will end real easy if the law was enforced.
Illegal wiretap is a quick charge.
Can your phone company listen in on your phone calls? No? Well then why is the Internet connection not treated the same?
People have mentioned(via sarcasm) in the past about having to listen to a commercial when you pick up your phone to dial out. So your phone rates can be really low.
Some government officials say that no laws apply to the Internet(no Internet specific laws in the books), yet people are prosecuted for crimes on the Internet.
Start jailing these company boss's, for their crimes against our privacy.
Hackers get prosecuted(when caught) for capturing our key strokes, so why not your ISP for capturing all your open data?
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Consumer Rights is more than just a suggestion. | |
| | openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
kudos:2 | Re: Snoopvertising said by zalternate:Can your phone company listen in on your phone calls? No? Well then why is the Internet connection not treated the same? Do you want the Internet regulated in a similar manner to phone service? | |
| | | | | Re: Snoopvertising No, not entirely, but I sure as hell don't want them snooping on all my traffic, either. | |
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| | wow may die soon This does not look good.
There slower speeds / LACKING HD line up is not helping them.
1 thing that can do is have a big clear qam and trun off anaglog and add a lot of HD. Having no CSN+ HD and NO big ten HD is bad.
also add cltv as well. | |
| | | Looking elsewhere I wondered why I'm getting all this political junk mail. This is utter crap.  | |
| | | Food for thought While I'm not keen on the idea of being spied upon I think that targeted advertising may have a place. If their Big Brother computer system is keeping tabs of the types of sites I visit and sending me Ads that are relevant to my interests, at least I'll no longer get those Enzyte pop Ups!!. I mean, if I have to see ads on the internet anyway, I would much rather have them be something that may actually be of interest to me instead of that new Breast Pump that is on sale.
This type of thing (tracking cookies, etc) has been around since the internet was invented by Al Gore (LOL). Maybe it just needs to be monitored and kept in check so that nothing that is truly personally identifiable or private gets out.
Just a thought....
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If Quizzes are Quizzical then Tests must be..... | |
| | Reviews:
 ·WOW Internet and..
| Re: Food for thought Really, you don't have to see ads at all. I don't. Between Adblockplus, Noscript, Flashblock and the occasional Greasmonkey script, I only view what I want to. It's really no trouble to implement these things.
I find these hidden ploys that ISPs come up with very annoying. But in my case, where I'm located, WOW is the lesser of the evils.
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'void planets roll regardless of desolation' | |
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| | That was the day Damn I went thought the pain in the ass it was to opt out. After that I sent them an email asking why I had to opt out instead of opt in. That was the day my opinion of WOW changed. | |
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