Developers of Internet-enabled advertising software defended themselves
Thursday against accusations of creating “spyware” and violating the privacy
of Internet users.
“We are completely onboard with privacy and would never do some of the
things people are saying. That would be a huge violation of privacy and it’s
against the law,” said Peter Fuller, director of communications for Aureate
Media.
At issue is the automated ad-serving technology developed by market leaders
Aureate and Conducent Technologies,
whose software comes bundled with a growing number of freeware Windows utilities. Aureate’s ad-banner technology is used
by nearly 400 ad-supported software applications, including the popular
CuteFTP utility. Conducent has deals with portal sites Lycos and Go2net,
which distribute freeware applications including the popular PKzip file
compression utility. It also has directly partnered with dozens of software
developers.
In a nutshell, such adbot software pulls down banners from a server on the
Internet, caches them on the user’s hard disk, and then display them in a
special window in the utility or application. What’s got some users
concerned, however, is the traffic going in the other direction, back up to
the server.
According to a frequently-asked-questions list
prepared by Conducent, the company assigns users a unique ID that helps the company track what ads he
or she has seen and clicked on. Also sent back to the server is the IP
network mask (but not the specific IP address) of the user’s domain. But the
company claims that it does not track what sites a user visits. Nor does it
create a personally identifiable profile of the user’s information.
“We don’t do any of the things folks are concerned about at the moment —
tracking what they’re using or seeing online. We don’t have the capability
to do that and that’s not the data we stream back,” said Bob Regular,
director of marketing for Conducent.
According to Regular, the increased use of personal firewall software by end
users has spawned many complaint calls to Conducent, which installs a
program called tsadbot.exe on the user’s hard disk. Information about the
program is detailed in the software’s click-wrap agreement, but many ignore
the license information, and firewall alerts are often the first indication
that their computer is communicating with an ad server in the background.
Concerns about Aureate’s technology were fanned in recent days by a posting
to a mailing list for lawyers by Dale Haag, a security expert with Net
Defender, a security consulting firm in
Seabrook, Texas. The posting accused Aureate of uploading four pages of user
information back to the company, including a list of all installed software
on the PC and any multimedia clips downloaded by the user.
Haag told InternetNews Thursday that his posting was based on preliminary
investigations and was not intended for widespread publication.
Aureate’s Fuller said the company’s privacy practices are more progressive
than many in the Internet advertising industry, including leaders
DoubleClick (DCLK) and Engage.
“They are getting so much more information than we are and some don’t even
have an opt-out policy. We’re opt-in, and even if you don’t give us your
information, the product is still free. It’s a heck of a deal for
consumers,” Fuller said.
But Richard Smith, the Massachusetts-based software developer and privacy
advocate, said he is troubled by the lack of disclosure by adbot companies
like Conducent and Aureate, and by the always-on nature of their technology.
“I have a real problem with programs that unnecessarily run in the
background all of the time. It potentially makes systems unreliable and
opens security holes,” said Smith.
In postings to newsgroups, some users have reported that installing some
Aureate-supported programs causes system lock-ups and browser crashes, and
despite uninstalling the ad-supported program, the Aureate ad-serving client
remains on their machines.
Fuller said the company is not aware of any specific bugs with its
technology that could be causing such problems, although he said some
shareware developers using the Aureate technology may have implemented it
improperly.
Third-party software companies like Conducent and Aureate are not the only
ones getting into the internet-enabled ad software game. Qualcomm recently
introduced a freeware version of its popular Eudora
e-mail package which serves banner ads to users. Eudora says the ad-serving technology was developed in-house, and
that it does not collect any private information without the consent of the
user.