Comments on: Charter's Web monitoring draws intervention from Capitol Hill

Two members of Congress ask Charter Communications to "not move forward" with its plans to track customers' Web browsing and display relevant advertisements.

[rcrusoe]

An Opt Out cookie is a joke in a world where it is common practice for security conscious users to delete all cookies each time they close their browser. If these "spy on your customer" practices are such an advantage to the user they should be Opt In only.

[PzkwVIb]

Actually cookies are usefull and only the unduly paranoid delete them all of the time.

I received the "web enhancement" letter from Charter earlier this week. The first two calls I made to their tech support were to people that had no idea about the letter. After a couple more calls I finally got in touch with someone who knew about the letter. She gave me the web browser cookie answer. After telling her that using cookies was nutty, I've got several computers and sometimes clear cookies, and its offensive that Charter would alter Internet data and call it an enhancement. She said there was a non-cookie opt-out site at charter.net/onlineprivacy but nope, that's the cookie opt-out site. She also had no corporate complaints number, no complaints email address etc. If only there was an alternative to Charter for me.

It's outrageous that Charter would try to re-label spying and altering of Internet traffic as an enhancement. I can't believe they would expect their customers to be anything but upset about it.

Chris

[krinsh]

I use one of their higher end cable internet products. If I, for one minute fraction of an instant, receive a targeted ad - MOST ESPECIALLY if I do not receive a "we are monitoring you" banner every single time I connect - but sincerely if I ever get one single ad intruded into my connection I will terminate my service immediately. Profiting from the sales of advertisement does nothing to enhance a service I AM ALREADY PAYING FOR. Now I'll take all the ads within reason they want if my 10MB connection becomes free...

[Lerianis]

That basically my thinking as well: if they allow me to have a connection for FREE, then I will put up with targeted ads. Otherwise.... FORGET IT!

[Gayle Edwards]

Actually, cookies CAN be useful... But they can (and frequently ARE) also be used to track and thereby abuse web-surfers. Furthermore, most security-procedures include regularly-deleting cookies for both, security, and general system "clean-up", purposes (frankly, I dont know a single computer-professional that doesnt regularly delete "cookies"). Thats NOT "paranoia", its just the intelligent thing to do if you maintain a computer system. Honestly, in my opinion, anyone who says otherwise just does NOT know what they are talking about.

And finally, we use "Charter"... and their little DNS-redirect for bad IP-names (another of their, unwanted additional ad-revenue-driven "enhancements", which also uses "cookies")... It is a colossal PAIN (it plays havoc with normal surfing, on a wide variety of WEB-browsers... and simply cannot, actually, be turned-off). But, "Charter" has proven, time and again, that they simply do not care about customer complaints.

[AppleSuxLeo]

TOR !

[chuck_whealton]

That they would even considering doing this shows a clear lack of ethics in their upper management.

[drhamad]

OK I'm confused... exactly where would Charter show me ads? We don't use Charter Cable - had it back in like '98, but switched over to SBC DSL... but just from a general standpoint... where exactly is Charter going to show ads? I don't go to my ISP's websites, so I'm confused?

[nelsondr]

Allowing me to opt-out by setting a cookie on my browser is ludicrous. How am I supposed to set a cookie on my TiVo or on my Wii? There are so a many different devices that now connect to the internet without the use of a "browser" that this would be impossible to fully opt-out of being tracked. Also are these ads going to steal revenue from other sites? There's too much unknown about this. Charter shouldn't do this, they are going to be opening a can of worms that will have more than Capital Hill coming down on them.

[switcher75]

Senator Dorgan and his colleagues can rant all they wants about commercial wiretapping, meanwhile they plan to pass a bill today that gives Dubbya authority for warrant-less wiretapping.

They are all trying very trying to change the subject from their abject kowtowing to the administration