because let's face it, ads are here to stay on the Internet.

I'm pretty good at tuning them out, so they don't bug me too much. But if I have to have them, I'd much rather have some say about their content. Currently, my "say" is determined by the content of some web pages (i.e., those that use Google Ads). The ISP-level monitoring is much more intrusive, and I'm totally against it. In my opinion, it would just be a big boost for ssl-based proxy services.

Anyway, I think that the right way for ISPs to do behavioral advertising is simply to ask people what kinds of things they are interested in in an optional questionaire. If you didn't fill it out, things would stay about as they are, but if you did fill something like that out, then obviously it could be used to market to you. But would that be a bad thing? I think not.

Greg Shenaut