Should your ISP monitor your online activities to serve you targeted ads?
Since last autumn, BT – under the “Webwise” banner – has been trialling a technology called Phorm, which dials direct into your internet service provider’s network and intercepts communications between you and the websites you visit, using information about the sorts of things you are viewing to serve you targeted ads.
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Thanks to hard work from campaigners at the Foundation for Information Policy Research and the Open Rights Group, and activists at dephormation.org.uk and nodpi.org, we now have that choice. The Information Commissioner’s Office has ruled that BT must ask the explicit permission of its customers to “opt in” before enrolling them into its Webwise trial (rather than the pernicious “opt out” clauses so beloved of marketers and junk mail operatives). Here’s why I think every last one of those customers should actively count themselves out.
Source: The Guardian
