Good to see some intense discussion of Phorm going on here, and thanks for the references above. I'm not going to express my personal opinions in writing because I'm not sure whether my professional indemnity insurance goes high enough to protect me...
However, on a positive note, I do believe that there is room for Phorm et al on the Internet. If an ISP launched a free ADSL service, and in return users had to submit to Phorm-like profiling, you can bet it would be a success. What's not at all reasonable is to launch it as an opt-out on existing users.
Most upsetting is the way in which all this has been done in secrecy because 'we'd be too stupid to understand'. OK, so 58% of the population allegedly believe that
Sherlock Holmes was real, and nearly a quarter think that Winston Churchill was fictional, but the rest of us are perfectly capable of figuring out what's going on thank you very much.
Grumble.
Can't promise to check in every day, but I'll watch this space.
Toby