Online tracking company faces Senate hearing scrutiny
WASHINGTON - Executives from Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., and Facebook Inc. are due for a grilling about online privacy in a Senate committee today, but the company likely to get the most scrutiny is NebuAd Inc.
The Silicon Valley start-up has drawn criticism from privacy advocates for working with Internet service providers to track the online behavior of customers and then deliver targeted banner ads.
According to Ari Schwartz, vice president of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a civil liberties group, NebuAd's business model raises many of the same concerns as an earlier generation of "adware" companies. Those companies developed software programs that - when downloaded to a computer - could track where a user went on the Internet and mine that information to deliver customized online ads. Several NebuAd executives in fact were once employed by Gator Corp., an adware company that later renamed itself Claria Corp.
NebuAd works directly with Internet service providers to scan customers' Web surfing habits and deliver ads presumed to be of interest to them.
By injecting its monitoring between consumers and websites, NebuAd may violate a 1986 US law that requires at least one party to a communication to consent to a wiretap, according to an analysis released yesterday by the Center for Democracy & Technology.
