Internet providers sell logs of users at 40 cents

It became known that among American Internet providers it is considered normal practice to sell the logs of surfing to their users at 40 per month. Such databases do not contain specific names, however they tag each User 1, User 2, etc.

The technical director of the analytical company Compete, who herself may be involved in such transactions, spoke about this vicious practice at the Open Data 2007 conference. According to him, when selling logs, the average cost of a monthly user’s surfing history is about 40 cents, and the number of buyers is usually from 10 to 12, so the provider earns up to $ 5 per month (up to $ 60 per year) for each user.

This whole story is reminiscent of last year's scandal with the leak of AOL user search queries . That database was intended for research purposes, and the scandal flared up only when it was laid out in open access. In other words, secretly from the public, such transactions can be turned every day, and in Russia, all the more. True, in RuNet, the demand for such information is smaller than in the USA, so prices should also be lower.

via Seeking Alpha