ASC: Watching the Watchers

The Anti-Spyware Coalition has launched a review of Phorm, NebuAd, and other behavioral targeting firms that track user data from inside the world's ISPs.

Today, the ASC - a collection of anti-spyware companies, academics, and various consumer advocates - announced a new internal working group to decide how Phorm and the Phormettes will affect the organization's overarching policies on spyware.

These policies serve as guidelines for the leading anti-spyware apps. "We update our documents when a new potential threats and new potentially-unwanted technologies emerge," says Ari Schwartz, the vice president and chief operating officer at the Center for Democracy and Technology, which first organized the ASC. "Some [anti-spyware companies] have said that behavioral advertising is a gray area when it comes to the ASC definitions. And if some people think this a gray area, it's something we need to look at."