AT&T ends its Internet Preferences program, which analyzed user browsing habits to better target ads
Controversial traffic scanning program, Internet Preferences, meets its demise. — AT&T is getting rid of Internet Preferences, the controversial program that analyzes home Internet …
Context & Ripple Effects
Internet Preferences scanned AT&T home broadband customers' browsing to target ads, making it one of the most aggressive carrier data programs at a moment when rivals were already retreating: Verizon had been forced into first a partial and then a complete opt-out of its mobile 'supercookies' during 2015.
The shutdown also lands mid-stream in AT&T's own push to control what customers do on its pipes — months earlier it had argued it should get to decide which online video services count against its data caps. Killing the traffic scanner while pursuing preferential treatment for chosen video services marks a shift from watching browsing to steering it.
First-order effects
- AT&T home internet customers stop having their traffic analyzed for ad targeting without the program's discounts-and-data trade-off, and AT&T forfeits whatever ad revenue the deep-packet inspection supported.
Second-order effects
- With Verizon already conceding a full supercookie opt-out, every major US carrier now faces pressure to drop or neutralize network-level behavioral ad targeting rather than defend it publicly.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, carriers' monetization migrates away from inspecting customer traffic toward controlling access itself — zero-rating, sponsored data, and cap exemptions like AT&T's video proposal — where the leverage is contractual rather than surveillance-based.
The trend: US carriers are dismantling traffic-scanning ad programs under privacy pressure, replacing surveillance-based monetization with network-preference schemes that regulators and rivals are still learning to contest.