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Last year, AOL created an uproar when they released millions of search records to the general public for research purposes. This data was not as anonymous as they thought, and several people at AOL lost their jobs after the New York Times showed how the data could be used to identify individual searchers. Apparently not just search data, but entire user clickstreams are being sold by ISPs.
At the 2007 Open Data Conference last week, David Cancel, the CTO of the web market research firm Compete, disclosed that Internet Service Providers sell their customer’s clickstream data for about 40 cents/month per user to various buyers. Compete uses this clickstream data, as well as data complied from other sources to provide webpage “"snapshots":http://snapshot.compete.com/www.omninerd.com” and other services. Other companies, like Hitwise, also use this information to report traffic trends such as the recent announcement on a traffic increase at social networking sites. Cancel says he knows of about a dozen major buyers of this clickstream data and it likely includes the government as well as business. While ISPs have been doing this for years, few users know about it because it is hidden deep within the User Agreements that no one reads. Attendees at the Open Data Conference predicted that at some point this clickstream market would gain media attention and create a "consumer firestorm."
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What a shock by romanizzo :: NR6 :: Show
Somebody please tell me that they are surprised about this. The nicest thing I will call you is naive – it’ll be downhill after that.
I surf porn. I admit it. Actually I admit it freely. I’m single, I’m male and I’m under 90. I’m not embarassed about porn. If I were embarassed about it, I wouldn’t do it. So, Mr Compete, sell my clickstreams all you want – I don’t click on your stupid internet ads anyway, unless said ad is on a website I want to support.
Yes, this post provides very little relevant discussion. Yes, I have been drinking. No, I don’t know why I felt the need to post.
Oh well; let them. by gnifyus :: NR8 :: Show
For some reason, even though the Big Brother warning bells went off when I first read this, it doesn’t bother me in general because it seems to equate more or less to what a traffic helicopter sees on the roads when flying overhead. No one is out there actually seeing what’s going on inside the car, or on your computer unless a concentrated pinpointed effort is made like the N.Y. Times did, just to try and make some kind of point. They only care about flow directions, not who’s doing the flowing.
Does Your ISP Sell Your Internet History? by tomtolman :: NR6 :: Show
Wired is trying to figure out which ISP’s sell clickstream data. So far they do not have many answers. I’m not sure why this information is so hard to get. Shouldn’t it be in the customer user agreements or their privacy policies?