Several major US Internet service providers made money on customer search queries.

The other day presents data from a study of network security experts from the University of California at Berkeley. The study is very interesting, and it concerns additional earnings of providers, for which they track the search queries of their clients. By the way, this is not one or two providers, the researchers found that such providers as Frontier, Hughes, Insight Broadband, XO Communication, Cincinnati Bell, Megapath, Cavalier, DirecPC, Paetec, Cogent, RCN and Wide Open West are participating in the scheme. . There was also (actually, there is) the company PaxFire, which plays the role of intermediary between providers and customers.

How did the circuit work? Everything is very simple and very effective (for providers). So, the intermediary, the company PaxFire, tracked the search queries of the customers of the providers. Based on this information, providers in some cases redirected the user from the search page directly to the site of the company. Well, for example, the user entered the query "best buy". It is clear that in 99% such a person is looking for a service with the same name. The providers could redirect the user immediately after entering this search query from the search results page to the Best Buy service. As soon as the user bought something there, PaxFire got the referral income. In the future, this money was shared between the provider and PaxFire.
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Actually, there are several companies like PaxFire (as was discovered during the investigation). But it was she who collaborated with many providers. A lawsuit has already been filed against PaxFire. The basis for the claim is the law on the protection of personal information, which, no doubt, are search queries.

The researchers found that about 170 search queries were used in the scheme, input of which led to the user being redirected from the page of search results to the page of a certain service offering referral payments.

A team from the University of California released a special program, Netalyzr , which allows the user to understand whether his provider uses a similar scheme. In addition, there is also an extension to Firefox, encrypting user search queries, forwarding them over HTTPS.

Via yahoo