07.17.2008 8:10 am
I know where you’ve been Web surfing . . .
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Some entrepreneurs think creepy behavior has a big potential payoff. The Washington Post reported today about Congressional hearings into Embarq, a Kansas-based Internet service provider, which used special software to snoop into some customers’ online habits.
The idea is to market this information to advertisers.
The story has a local angle: Charter Communications had considered launching the same spy software to track its Internet customers, but says it thought better of it in June.
Maybe I am wrong, maybe most consumers don’t care.
But I think new media companies are playing with fire when they embark on this spying business.
I think plenty of good paying customers would flock to providers that protect, rather than prostitute, privacy.
Eddie Roth writes about education, social justice, public safety, transportation, legal affairs and historic preservation. He joined the Post-Dispatch editorial page in 2008 after six years as an editorial writer with the Dayton Daily News. But he is not new to St. Louis. Eddie grew up in Webster Groves and south St. Louis County. He's a lawyer who for many years practiced with a downtown firm, and was active in civic affairs, including serving a term on the St. Louis Police Board. He and his wife, Jeanne, and their three daughters, Emily, Julia and Alice, live in the Shaw Neighborhood.
When it comes to community organizing, he endorses Quentin Crisp's advice: Rather than keeping up with the Joneses, it's better to pull them down to your level. 
