US Congress

On 16th May 2008 The Register reported that Ed Markey, Chairman of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce subcommittee had written to Charter, an ISP who was proposing to deploy NebuAd, a product similar to Phorm. On 25th June 2008, The Washington Post reported that Charter had withdrawn plans to move forward with the scheme.

On 30th June another US ISP, CenturyTel, suspended their use of NebuAd. And on 7th July yet another US ISP, Massillion, froze its plans to embrace behavioral ad targeting with FrontPorch, another company offering Phorm-like technology.

On 17th July, a Congressional hearing quizzed NebuAd's Chief Executive and on 4th August Congress widened its enquiries to encompass thirty major US Internet Service Providers.

On 4th September it was reported that the CEO of NebuAd had resigned.

On 25th September as part of a Senate committee hearing, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon pledged to refrain from tracking customer Web behavior unless they received explicit permission to do so. But they preferred to regulate it themselves.

An interesting article was published on 8th October 2008 by Harlan Yu in Freedom to Tinker: "Lessons from the Fall of NebuAd".

Class Action against NebuAd and participating ISPs

On Tuesday 12th November 2008, The Register reported that a class action had been initiated against Nebuad, its Fair Eagle subsidiary, and six ISPs: Bresnan Communications, Cable One, CenturyTel, Embarq, Knology, and WOW (formerly WideOpenWest). The suit questions whether user data was actually anonymised and claims that even if it was anonymised, it was done so too late. "Any alleged anonymization of subscriber's identity during any phases after the point of initial interception of the online communication," the suit continues, "did not 'anonymize' the intentional initial interception of online communication."

On Tuesday 3rd February 2009, MediaPost reported that the ISPs defending this class action were arguing that "... NebuAd alone allegedly intercepted traffic, while they were merely passive participants in the plan".
On Friday 6th February 2009, Ars Technica covered this story in more detail.
... Now, the ISPs are fighting back. Turns out that NebuAd was just a business partner; yes, the ISPs let the company install its boxes inline in their networks for (as one court document puts it) "a modest check for a portion of revenue from the trial," but it wasn't the ISPs who monkeyed with anyone's private data.

Class Action against Adzilla and participating ISPs

On Tuesday 3rd March 2009 Wired reported that a further class action had been started against Adzilla.

Demise of Zango (180 Solutions)

On Tuesday 21st April 2009, The Register reported that "Controversial adware firm Zango has gone out of business ... Zango's closure effectively sounds the death knell of a controversial business model."

Further US Congress hearing

On Thursday 23rd April 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported that "Lawmakers took aim at privacy practices of cable and Internet providers Thursday at a House subcommittee hearing, laying the groundwork for the introduction of legislation that could restrict companies' ability to target ads at consumers online."

NebuAd closes down - or does it?

On Monday 18th May 2009, Media Post reported that NebuAd had closed down and assigned remaining assets to an entity that would pay off creditors. But very quickly, it turned out that they had rebranded as Insight Ready and relocated to the UK.

However, on Wednesday 20th May 2009, The Register reported that InsightReady's business model would be "closer to a 'traditional' behavioural targeting system than to the deep packet inspection-dependent plans of NebuAd and Phorm".

Congress acts

On 8th September 2009, the US edition of Computer Weekly reported that Congress was drafting a law to prevent web profiling. The move came days after a coalition of 10 privacy campaigners, led by the Center for Digital Democracy, published a 13 page report on online behavioural tracking and targeting concerns and solutions. The coalition said entities that capture web behaviours "seek to create, compile, and use detailed profiles revealing consumers' interests, activities, and other personal characteristics without limit", mainly to increase response rates to advertising.