http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ispphorm/
This is a government petition to stop phorm in it’s tracks. If you don’t know what phorm is, it’s your ISP allowing an advertising company (phorm) to scan ALL the web activity you make from your home computer and then target you with adverts based on what you look at on the web. Imagine that instead of just getting junk mail in the post they also read all mail you both recieve and send to/from any person on earth and then they target you futher with junk mail based on what they read in your private mail. THAT’S PHORM.
- Virgin Media
- BT
- Carphone Warehouse (talk talk)
are all looking into doing this and there’s more to follow. This is actually likely to break the law in terms of intercept (you must have the permission in law to intercept email from both parties, i.e. you AND any website you visit).
Some good examples of where this can lead to issues even if you’re not that bothered about privacy were on lug radio this week:
- You’re looking to buy a nice anniversary present for your wife and google lots of nice things like diamond rings or carribean holidays. Your wife then visits some websites and gets loads of really spefic ads to things you’re considering which blow the suprise. A small issue, but will be quite important to people if it happens.
- You’re communicating online about a deeply personal issue, say a medial problem, through a forum or maybe even webmail. Then you’re now bombarded with adverts about your very personal problem, not very sensative. OK, so if you’ve got errectile disfunction then there’s already tonnes of viagra ads, but still..
This is very very bad, my data is mine. Get off it Virgin..
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