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I just got a notice from my cable provider, Charter Communications, that they may start to “deliver or facilitate delivery of advertisements about goods and services that may be of interest” to me.  Apparently, they’re not too concerned about their customers’ rights, and are doing this as an opt-out service.  It’s one thing to spy for national security reasons, it’s another thing to spy on innocent people just to deliver ads.

From their website:

Targeted Marketing

Charter may partner with a third-party advertising company who may utilize cookies or web beacons to deliver or facilitate delivery of advertisements about goods and services that may be of interest to You. This partner will not have access to or use Your name, address, e-mail address, telephone number or other personally identifiable information; it may, however, anonymously track Your Web usage and collect what is known as “Click Stream Data.” Click Stream Data is anonymous, and may include information such as a web surfer’s IP address, web pages which have been viewed by a web surfer, date and time, domain type, and responses by a web surfer to an advertisement delivered by us or a third party advertising technology vendor. We, and/or the third party advertising technology vendor, may use different types of technologies to collect this type of information, including cookies and web beacons (1x1 pixels).

Opting-Out of Targeted Marketing:

You can request an “opt-out cookie” at www.charter.com/onlineprivacy, which is an identification tag that will prevent your anonymous data from being matched to any particular machine. Please note that this opt-out process will erase the cookie ID but not the cookie. It’s necessary for us to store this “opt-out” cookie on your computer in order to recognize you as an opt-out user. This is the only way Charter and our third party advertising partner can know you’ve chosen to take this action and ensure that your decision is recognized by our servers. Please note that if you ever clean out cookies from your internal drive you will need to visit www.charter.com/onlineprivacy site again and repeat this quick procedure. Also, please be aware that any time you change computers, have different browsers, have different computers, update your Internet browser or delete your cookie(s), you must repeat this opt-out process.

Does anybody else have a problem with this?

See also [Your web surfing habits, brought to you by Charter]