Is what we do on-line private? Do we already give up our personal on-line freedom just by browsing the internet? My initial answer to these questions was ‘No’ but once you start to look into it, opinions can change.
I like many others, have been browsing websites for years not giving a second thought to what personal information I‘m freely distributing throughout the world wide web. Websites can already find out a lot about your computer, Web Browser, Operating System, what plug-ins you have, even down to the city you are in at that time by you IP Address. This all may seem relatively harmless until you take into account Phorm!
Phorm is a private company in the UK, which has signed up with several of the major ISPs to track everything there users do online. Phorm will build an “anonymous” profile of each user not just to track the websites they visit, but the content those web pages have, the search terms they use, what downloads they choose, everything. They say they will use this information to make the web “more relevant”.
Now i see this as a huge invasion of privacy and something i should have the option of agreeing to, not a “lets hope they don’t notice” approach. This may even be illegal under UK law.
The thing i find hardest to understand is why the ISPs have agreed to it. They have had a long standing approach that they cannot track what there users do online and therefore cannot be held liable for there users actions. Surley Phorm opens them up to potential legal battles.
Or are they going to use this information to remove the users that may look at or stumble across questionable content? Does this mean we have to start behaving, like a naughty school child under the watchful eyes of strict teacher?
I know its early days but is this the start of a Orwellian approach to the web, how long before companies like this spring up around the world? How long until our IP address pinpoints our house on a map and they know what we want before we do? Or am I just a sceptic?
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Frequently Asked Questions
Phorm illegal interception also copyright of websites visited.
By: illegal | 03-07-2008
You have a child with their own computer, this child is not the ISP account holder a webwise page pops up this child spots the name webwise and associates this with the BBC program he uses at school so clicks to allow. This child has just been allowed to alter the T&C of the ISP account while under the age of being allowed to give informed consent, The ISP now is profiling a minor without parental consent, changed the customers T&C without his verifiaction. Would this fall into invaision of privacy since the person consenting was mislead by false advertising yes Phorm selected an alreadyb known and trusted name by children used by the BBC. 1. Would this be breaking the law? 2. Why does the account holder have to verify wioth password to login or even talk to the ISP about anything but a child can change the T&C without any way to verify it is the account holder? 3. Interception of the browser is illegal so how can Phorm suceed without breaking the law? 4.Websites you visit all have copyright you can visit but are not supposed to copy, proccess for material gain this phorm will do who wil pay the website owners for breaching their copyright? 5. Why will phorm not follow the robots.txt for its own instead of googles? 6. With such as google I can delete cookies and any tracking they are doing is stopped, with phorm it is on my connection so can never turn it off 100% have tot ake the word of one person who has no reputation since he has been hijaking browsers illegally for years would you trust this knowing that?
If I change my ISP from Bigpond to Soul TPG, is my old email deleted?
By: Drakesh | 30-06-2008
If I change my ISP from Bigpond to Soul TPG, is there a way that I can still have my old email with bigpond enabled? Or when I remove my Internet Plan with Bigpond will my old email address be deleted?
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