Internet user tracking may need to be fully “opt-in” according to regulators - A bad thing for traditional Internet service providers
I wrote earlier about controversial behavioural tracking company NebuAd which had been trialling a service that would allow carrier to profile its users by tracking their surfing habits in the hope of getting paid to help delivered targeted advertising to its customers. NebuAd has apparently been working with Cable company Charter Communications (but Charter has subsequently dropped the system) and has worked with about a dozen other service providers in the U.S. On the FCC commissioner Kevin Martin leaning towards admonishing Comcast for its role in violating Net Neutrality principles, a couple of politicians have recently come out with some statements that may limit what carrier can do in terms of “sniffing” what its customers are doing on the Internet.
Democrat Edward Markey has, according to Dow Jones, believes that this form of tracking needs to be only performed if consumers explicitly agree to the tracking in the first place. “We need the same standard here. It has to be opt- in,” said Markey. As noted by Republican Joe Barton, “”I understand the need to collate information. I just don’t think it should be done without my permission.”
In my mind, this would render this entire form of tracking completely useless because users are really not ready for “useful advertising” yet. In other words, if given the choice, I believe most Internet users would be in favour of no carrier tracking of their surfing habits and more privacy - a sentiment supported by Democrat Senator Byron Dorgan: “Many consumers express concerns about the privacy and data security implications of being targeted.”
In a sense, these sentiments from politicians do indicate an increasing appetite for laying down the rules as to what carriers can and can’t do from a traffic management perspective. Increasingly, it appears that carrier traffic prioritization and even traffic examination is coming under scrutiny by regulators, and as such, is taking away some of the tools that carriers can use to monetize next-generation traffic flows. Clearly, a completely clean high-speed Internet pipe to all users is an ideal situation for over-the-top service providers like Google, Apple, Amazon, etc and in my view, U.S. regulators appear to be leaning in that direction at present.
