Charter Watcher

Some background on NebuAD

Robb Topolski, author of the highly recommended and incredibly technical privacy report on NebuAD’s methods, made a comment on this site yesterday about NebuAD employees, asking if I would look into the rumor that some of them had previously worked for Gator, the notorious spyware company. At first I dismissed the rumor as just that; negative speculation is not hard to find around companies who are engaged in repugnant behavior.

Robb’s concern stayed with me though, so last night I started digging up whatever I could find on the matter. It seems that Robb was quite right. There are some very deep links between NebuAD and Gator, along with other spyware/tracking companies. I will update this list as more information is uncovered. I’ve done everything in my power to verify everything listed, but I cannot claim that all of this information is completely factual. It’s just tough to trust the Internet sometimes. Also, if you have anything to add to this list, please contact me here.

• Scott Tavenner, NebuAD’s vice president of business development, held the title of director of business development at Gator/Claria.
• Paul Goad, NebuAD’s managing director for the UK, founded Tacoda, a behavioral advertising company. Visiting Tacoda’s website, it becomes immediately clear that they and NebuAD hired the same web developer. What is it about companies doing things no one would ever be proud to do advertising that fact by presenting as little information and navigation as possible on their websites?
• Mike Miller is NebuAD’s vice president of advertising sales, and also a former Gator. While there he held the title of director of sales.
• Here’s one that’s a little different. Lebin Chang, the VP of Engineering and Infrastructure Products for NebuAD, previously worked for McAfee on a team managing intrusion detection software. I suppose if part of your business is gaining questionable access to the machines of your users using methods most commonly associated with scammers and spammers, you need a good security guy to keep you from getting caught.
• Chuck Gilbert, a senior product manager at NebuAD is also a former Gator guy. He may not be important enough at NebuAD to get his own page, but around here he’s a rock star.
• Amy Auranicky is a director of sales at nebuAD. That’s quite a step up from her position as integration manager at Claria.
• Jeanne Houweling is the vice president of advertising services at NebuAD. She was previously employed as the senior director of business development at Claria.
• Kevin Wilk, the Vice President of West Sales at NebuAD was a Business Development Manager at Eyeblaster, another monitoring/tracking/spyware company.
• Len Munday is the European Technical Director for NebuAD. He once held the position of Senior System Engineer at Allot Communications, a company which specializes in deep packet inspection solutions.

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 5 confirmed Gator/Claria connections, 2 connections to other spyware companies, a security guy, and a deep packet inspection guru thus far.

Are these the people we really want running a network which has unfettered access to the most intimate aspects of our lives? Even if what they were doing was legal, which is isn’t, do these seem like the best people with whom to team up?

Update 6/24: Several articles have been published recently about NebuAD’s association with Gator. The L.A. Times points out at least 5 former Gator employees at NebuAD. The Register echoes that number. Crunchgear has it too. The list goes on and on.