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Scary Ad Targeting Firm Tries To Reassure Public, Congress

spyware.jpgPoor NebuAd! Internet service providers are fleeing the ad-targeting startup in droves, and privacy advocates have succeeded in making the firm a poster child for the evils of behavioral targeting. The company will no doubt be topic A at a Senate hearing on online privacy issues scheduled for Wednesday.

What to do? Try, at least, to reassure the public. That's what NebuAd is trying to do today. Among NebuAd's initiatives: a new option for ISPs to give users periodic notifications that they're being tracked, and the ability to allow them to easily opt out.

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The obsession with NebuAd is odd because what the company does isn't really that different from all the other behavioral targeting firms across the Web. The key difference: Because it gets your browsing history from your Internet provider, it knows every site you've been to -- not just the select group of sites that use AOL (TWX), Yahoo (YHOO), etc., for targeting.

But NebuAd's initiatives seem pretty no-win: Unlikely to mollify the critics and likely to remind users how creepy (on some level) that behavioral targeting really is.

Question: Given the opportunity, who wouldn't opt out? And if an ISP starts telling subscribers they're being tracked -- no matter how benign or anonymous that might be -- how may subscribers will decide to dump the service for one that doesn't? (Not that Americans have many options for Internet service.)

See Also:
Another Internet Provider Abandons Ad Targeting Plan
Behavioral Targeting: Big Noise, Tiny Business
Cable Exec: 'Shame On Us' If We Don't Figure Out Ad Targeting

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