http://consumerist.com/tag/charter-cable/?i=5023127&t=you-won-a-65+inch-tv-from-charter-cable-here-is-your-19+inch-tv

I’m no Charter lover, but I think you need to admit that there is more to this story than what you originally wrote. Lots of misunderstandings, starting with the 15 year old daughter who took the original phone call. Turns out they didn’t win the grand prize (nobody at Charter used those words when they spoke to the daughter, apparently) but won instead one of the lesser-value consolation prizes that was added by Charter after the contest was announced.

The real grand prize winner was a dad in Tennessee who had leukemia. See the Charter press releases in the link and the subsequent followups by the Charter PR rep.

With something like this, it’s easy to report the initial sensational story as passed around the internet, but it’s harder to be responsible and provide the followup when it turns out that the story isn’t entirely true the way it was originally reported.

So far, denying Javascript pretty much kills their ad serving because it can’t drop any cookies tied to your “unique hash” and thus what information it knows about you goes unused.

However, I have to believe this is simply the first small step in further privacy infringements. I think Nebuad would much rather have it tied to something a bit more concrete, but the ISPs are worried about initial customer uproar, so they had to come up with this kludge. Given time, I’m sure that all parties will continue to whittle away at any appearance of anonymity and simply call it what it is: tracking what you do online and selling it to the highest bidder.

I hate to get into name calling, but this scheme is douche-baggery of the highest order. I work in the advertising industry and the big buzzword “behavioral advertising” has been thrown about for some time. The truth is that any time you start talking about the behavior of people, you’re pretty much helping yourself to a seat in their living room, their car or next to them when they enjoy their down time.

Online marketers are on a certain path to being in the same category as telemarketers; annoying, intrusive, inconsiderate and usually scammy.

Nebuad’s venture capital angels deserve to lose their investment as I’m sure the company won’t survive the public outcry.

I’ve not heard the Gator rumor, but if I come across anything I’ll definitely mention it here.

I’ve also read your report, which is the most informative thing I’ve seen yet on the matter. The only thing I’m left wondering is the end result of having this technology on tap. NebuAD’s code may start by making hashes and dropping IP addresses, and it even may protect a customer’s identity, but for how long? At what point do they decide tying a hash to a log on the script server is just another “enhanced service?” At what point do they then try to tie an email address to that IP? Then the IP to an address, then a name from the tax assessor , and so on. Next thing you know NebuAD has a full-on database, and all by using data they got legally from Charter.

It’s a total disaster. Your efforts are absolutely paramount in getting this stopped. Thank you for all of your hard work.

I’ve read a widely-spread rumor that employees (some say seven employees) of the former advertising company Gator are key employees in NebuAd. Indeed NebuAd started right about the time that Gator stopped, both are from Redwood City, and both had products that pushed all bounds of responsible advertising.

Could you perhaps research this rumor and cover it in a future article?

Thanks

Robb Topolski
(the author of the NebuAd technical report)