Eshoo Wants Details On AT&T Ad Activity
Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., wants to know for sure whether AT&T is engaged in any activity that involves tracking its broadband Internet subscribers' online activities to target advertising and on Friday asked the telecom giant's top executive to clarify. In a letter to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, Eshoo asked whether AT&T has used AudienceScience.com or any other behavioral advertiser to place ads on the Web, and if so, whether those firms notify consumers when data is collected. She also asked whether consumers are allowed to control what data is collected by advertising vendors and how it is used. Eshoo asked Stephenson when AT&T began advertising to consumers using behavioral targeting and whether it continues to engage in that activity. If AT&T has stopped, she wants to know when.
Her letter came on the heels of what she believed to be contradictory testimony from AT&T Chief Privacy Officer Dorothy Attwood on Thursday. During a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee, Attwood said AT&T does not use "deep packet inspection," a controversial type of network filtering that could be used to build extensive customer profiles and offer specialized content and advertising without consent. Attwood said AT&T would not use consumer information for that purpose "without an affirmative, advance action by the consumer." In August 2008, Attwood told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that AT&T does not engage in behavioral advertising but the company is listed as a client of AudienceScience, which offers that service.
"As an ISP, we do not track our customer's data across unrelated Web sites to create a profile for behavioral advertising, or hire other firms to do so on our behalf," an AT&T spokesman told Tech Daily Dose. He said his company's relationship with AudienceScience is as an advertiser of AT&T products and services. Suggestions that AT&T is engaging in behavioral advertising by selling customer information are "flat wrong," he said. The spokesman added that AT&T has consistently told Congress it uses ad networks. In related news, a testimonial listed on AudienceScience's Web site from MEC Interaction, which had AT&T as a client, has been removed. The message read: "AudienceScience rocks and I recommend using them for all of your BT campaigns."
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