This one is aimed mainly at our UK members but given link 3 may be of interest
to our colonial cousins.

We rant on again and again about customer privicy, data protection and then......

We have the fact that for purely commercial reasons several of the UK's
biggest ISP's are about to sell your browsing data in order to generate revenue.

Kudos to Talk talk who have said it will only be positive opt in. However, the
ral bad boy here is BT.

After running a trial without telling the affected customers, refusing to retrospectivly tell customers even after
it's been legally likened to an illegal phone tap.

Link one gives a general round up. Link two is the protest site and
link three is a recent article regarding the US Congress stance.

It's well worth 10 minutes of your time.


LINK ONE

Link TWO

LINK THREE

NB: Virgin media have changed their stance to, 'we're only looking at the concept'.

However, it may be vote with your feet, as I will be doing.

Comments and questions welcome, I've been looking at this for a while.

Regards

DaveA



EDIT: 17/05. Reason, Inability to spell, remeber basic grammer, wasted education and it's early.

I don't have an issue with this, I'm sure you will be able to block a lot of this (if not all). How much would your browsing habits be worth then?
We are living in a Big Brother society and this is just another example of it.

In terms of blocking this its a cookie that is loaded on to your system, this is basically the same as spyware, that loga the searches & sites you visit. Then it sends your history to its main database, which is shared with websites that buy the contract and the adverts on that site are targetted to your searh& site history.

Thats the simple explanation of how it works. The problem is that BT collected information about people search habits and used it to target the adverts on websites. Is this not bordering on breach of DPA if you have not asked permission?

All I am saying is that I do not have an issue with this. I don't mind adverts popping up on my screen,I don't mind adverts on sites that I visit, I don't mind unsoolicited mail. If I don't want something I just don't buy it or even look at it.
As long as they are not stealing my bank account details what harm can it do?

Part of the issue here is the fact that a trial was run,
using actual live client data. This is effectivly running
a tap on your browsing keystream. This was done without asking for,
or later acknowledging which customers were used.

The RIPA act deems this an offence under the Electronic communications act.

If I may an analogy.

You phone a 192 service asking for the number for local the
local Penguin Pizza(TM) store. The log your phone number and
the enquiry you made. Next week you do the same thing. On the
third occasion they give you the number for Panda Pizza (AGAIN (TM))
who've paid them to research the history of caller, log the details
and route anything relevent to them first.

You may not mind the pop-up's, what you can't ignore is the huge
invasion of privacy that is storing your history and selling it to
what's the highest bidder.

Oh and it's opt put via cookie, not opt in. In other words yo have to
install a tracking cookie that says don't track me. This of course must
be done every time yo flush cookies otherwise you're deemed to have
opted in by default.

From a company that's already been prosecuted for Malicious tracking Adware
in the past.

It's well worth a look round some of the articals before deciding
it's one of those things.

I adopted the word 'Pimping' from one of the Register articles, however, personally
don't think there's a better term.

Regards

DaveA