Big Brother Comcast

Sounds like Comcast cable internet service is going to stop storing Web users' data. It's a good thing, too.

I'm not surprised to find they were caching Web usage -- it's a very common practice, from what I understand, although most companies don't tell their customers that it's being done. (Lots of consumer health information sites do the same thing -- here's a very interesting report on this practice, from the California Healthcare Foundation.)

I am a Comcast customer, and this switchover from the @Home network to the new Comcast network has been a painful one so far. It's not over yet, either. Because my e-mail address isn't the primary e-mail address on the account (Marty's is), I haven't been able to change my address to the new Comcast network yet. And the @Home e-mail will cut off two weeks from tomorrow.

It's not so hard to write and tell friends and acquaintances that I have a new e-mail address, of course, but it takes time for me to switch over all the business accounts I have under that address. I am nervous about losing access to my accounts with online services like NetFlix, PayPal, eBay, Half.com and so forth. It's very inconvenient, especially since I don't have the new address yet, and there's no guarantee that it'll be the same userid as my old one.

But at least they won't be tracking my moves on the Web anymore.