Re: ISPs selling clickstreams?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Karl Auerbach <karl () cavebear com>
Date: March 16, 2007 6:53:19 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] ISPs selling clickstreams?

David Farber wrote:

> http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/29449

Does anyone believe that Verisign and other operators of top level  
domains are not also doing data mining of the DNS queries they see?

Remember, when a DNS query hits a server it most often contains the  
full domain name being queried.

Because of caching of DNS information the top level domain servers  
are unlikely to see every query.  But it's no great trick to do some  
statistical analysis to come up with a confidence level in the  
information derived from the queries that are received.

Root server operators have the same ability, albeit more dilute due  
to even more caching, to generate that kind of marketing data.  The  
current crew of operators probably are not doing this, but there is  
nothing to prevent them from doing so in the future.

                --karl--


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