If you think advertisers shouldn’t be allowed to monitor your internet use, you probably also think the sun goes round the earth. That’s the argument of the CEO of NebuAd, the controversial internet monitoring firm which found itself under assault on Capitol Hill yesterday.

The hearing followed ongoing anger at internet providers using NebuAd’s technology, which involves installing a physical device on their network, taking highly detailed information about each user’s online activity, then sending personalised adverts to their computer.

Only a couple of weeks ago, Charter Communications put its plans to use NebuAd on hold after pressure from privacy groups, congressmen and even Connecticut’s state attorney. As the third or fourth largest cable firm in the US (depending on how you measure it), Charter would have been NebuAd’s highest-profile customer.

There’s an ongoing argument about both the ethics and legality of the system. Supporters say that it doesn’t do any harm if internet users can get more relevant adverts for products they are actually interested in. Detractors say it’s simply unacceptable for any private firm to gather such personal information.

The main topic at yesterday’s hearing was the opt-in/opt-out debate. At the moment, any customers of a provider using NebuAd must specifically opt-out of the tracking and ads. (Even then, they’ll have to take care not to delete the relevant cookie else they’ll automatically be put back in the scheme.)

Congressmen argued that the system was a clear breach of privacy and, as such, should only be allowed where a customer had specifically opted-in.

But NebuAd boss Robert Dykes insisted he was just misunderstood: “I feel like Galileo when he was viewed with scepticism on demonstrating that the Earth revolved around the sun. The science exists today and NebuAd is using it to create truly anonymous profiles that cannot be hacked or reverse-engineered.”

Of course, you could argue the comparison isn’t that egotistical. After all, Galileo developed the first telescope that made it practical to examine outer space, so zooming in on an individual computer user isn’t that much of a stretch – it’s just that NebuAd do it using phone lines.

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Entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 2:06 pm under Advertising, Legal.

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