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Originally Posted by PhormUKPRteam
Hi all
Hope you all had a good Easter? With reference to the above discussion, the Register article in the Guardian neatly highlights the two central issues here: protecting online privacy and needing ad funding to pay for Internet services. Of course people are concerned about the trade off they think they have to make between getting a personalised service on the one hand and giving up personal data on the other - we agree that they shouldn't have to make that pay off. So are you happy to be served targeted ads by companies that use your personal data and store it for more than 12 months before it is even anonymised? Surely it is better to have a system that stores absolutely no personal information, no IP addresses and no browsing histories - like us or not, that's a better privacy environment than you currently get.
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Again, you ignore the point. A lot of people don't mind advertising (targetted or not). They don't exactly like it, but they consider it a necessary evil. Most people probably wouldn't be too bothered about being monitored if the ISP was open about it (none have been so far), or they were getting a service for it. No, I do not count Webwise as a service, because it does something most modern browsers already do for free.
You mention other online ad services. I can only assume you mean Google. Google do track you (and are fairly open about doing so). But, for them to track you, you need to sign in to one of their services. Sign in is optional on their search (which does, admittedly, record your searches against your IP, which Google are fairly open about). If you sign in, you also get a good email/IM system, a news aggregation service and access to enhancements in some of their software. The software is also free. If you sign in, you are also tracked through Google Ads. Fair enough.
However, if you are not signed in, you can still prevent yourself from being tracked (should you so want). Just disable (or block) javascript in your browser.
Phorm does not offer this option.
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Online ad targeting is not going away; something the Guardian confirms in its statement. The reason that we've had such an enthusiastic response from the companies that we meet is that the Phorm system can earn ISPs and publishers - big and small - more money to plough back into the services you receive today - most of them for free. If not ad funding, then what other way is the Internet going to be paid for? Most Internet publishers have abandoned subscriptions because not enough people are actually prepared to pay when it comes down to it.
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Oh, I have no problem with internet advertising, as I have said before. This site is funded by adverts, I'd be a hypocrite to moderate here if I hated them.
It's the underhand way the monitoring is done that I have a problem with.