A House panel is ramping up its battle against behavioral advertising by requesting that major ISPs and Internet companies provide detailed information about how they collect and store information about Web users' Internet activity.
“Online users have a right to explicitly know when their broadband provider is tracking their activity and collecting potentially sensitive and personal information," Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce's Internet subcommittee, said Friday.
Markey and Republican subcommittee members Joe Barton of Texas and Cliff Stearns of Florida wrote a letter to 33 companies including Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner, Comcast, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google and asked that they answer 11 questions relating to their data collection processes.
Questions have been raised regarding privacy laws currently on the books “and whether legislation is needed to ensure that the same protections apply regardless of the particular technologies or companies involved," the congressmen wrote. “We are interested in the nature and extent to which you engage in such practices, and the impact it could have on consumer privacy."
“Online users have a right to explicitly know when their broadband provider is tracking their activity and collecting potentially sensitive and personal information," Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce's Internet subcommittee, said Friday.
Markey and Republican subcommittee members Joe Barton of Texas and Cliff Stearns of Florida wrote a letter to 33 companies including Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner, Comcast, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google and asked that they answer 11 questions relating to their data collection processes.
Questions have been raised regarding privacy laws currently on the books “and whether legislation is needed to ensure that the same protections apply regardless of the particular technologies or companies involved," the congressmen wrote. “We are interested in the nature and extent to which you engage in such practices, and the impact it could have on consumer privacy."
