Congress asks Embarq about selling customer info

Overland Park, Kan.-based Embarq is the nation's fourth-largest traditional telephone company with 1.34 million high-speed Internet subscribers in 14 states. It has been linked in the past with NebuAd Inc., a company that works with Internet service providers to tailor targeted ads based on what Web sites a particular subscriber visits.

In a letter sent Monday, Rep. Edward Markey, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, asked the company about a supposed test it conducted with NebuAd earlier this year in one of Embarq's markets.

Markey, D-Mass., was joined in the letter by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., and Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, the committee's ranking Republican.

In particular, the three said they wanted to know where the test was conducted, how many subscribers were involved, whether the subscribers were notified of how their information would be used and whether they were given a chance to opt out of the test. They also want to know what Embarq ultimately did with the subscribers' information.

"Surreptitiously tracking individual users' Internet activity cuts to the heart of consumer privacy," Markey said in a statement. "Embarq's apparent use of this technology without directly notifying affected customers that their activity was being tracked, collected and analyzed raises serious privacy red flags."

A spokeswoman for Embarq said the company was reviewing the letter and couldn't comment further.

NebuAd was grilled earlier this month by the Senate Commerce Committee, and Markey is scheduled to discuss Internet privacy issues with the company's chief executive, Robert Dykes, during a hearing Thursday.

Markey and Barton raised concerns in May with the plans of Charter Communications Inc., a St. Louis-based cable company, to test NebuAd's services in four markets. The company dropped those plans last month because of customer complaints.

Redwood City, Calif.-based NebuAd has stressed that it does not collect any personally identifiable information about consumers and that it requires Internet service providers to notify their subscribers about its advertising system.