[slowcoach]

Originally Posted by ceedee

In that case, I suspect an imposter has been posting in your name:

The two statements do not conflict with each other, I despise them for doing it whilst I know that it is going on and has been for as long as they have been able to do it.

Could you cite some sources for your claims concerning MicroShaft, banks and 'data miners' who can access and deal in our browsing history as Phorm hope to?

I never said Microsoft/Banks were stealing our browsing history, the fact is we do not know what data they collect and what happens to it afterwards.
In the case of Microsoft we do know that they read the disk to check if your copy of their application is legit, we also know they check to see if you need any updates, what we don’t know is what else they are doing because they cover their tracks.

In the case of Banks/Supermarkets, your spending habits are a valuable commodity, to be able to filter data just containing details of customers who for instance regularly buy wine in a certain price range makes this information worth many times the normal value, this type of filtered information is critical for some other company wishing to have a successful targeted marketing campaign.
Hell, they are that greedy and short termed they will even sell your data to one of their rivals.
Avoiding Phorm still leaves us vulnerable to the thousands of other data collectors.

There are the companies who do nothing else but buy and sell data, they will source data from all and sundry, very little you do today goes unrecorded by someone.