Google alerts has just popped this one up
Government warned on surveillance society dangers
From the report
Quote:
50. The company Phorm has designed Webwise and OIX, services which track internet
users’ online behaviour in order to increase the effectiveness of advertising on the internet.
These services have been taken up by some of the UK’s biggest internet service providers
but have been criticised on the grounds that if they are activated without the consent of the
user, they infringe privacy and may fall foul of laws regulating the interception of
communications. Phorm has given assurances that:
the systems have been configured so that the company does not have a record of the
actual sites visited and search terms used by the user and in addition the advertising
categories exclude certain sensitive terms and have been drawn widely so that the
profiles that they hold for users will not inadvertently reveal the identity of a user or
return advertising of a sensitive nature ... the ISP does not hold or have access to
either the advertising categories users have been matched against or the user ID and
does not keep a lasting record of internet traffic for any reason other than it would
have originally.
51. In April 2008 the Information Commissioner took the view that Phorm could operate
Webwise and Open Internet Exchange (OIX) in a way which is in compliance with the
Data Protection Act and Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations but must be
sensitive to the concerns of users.
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Why does everyone who may matter miss the blatant interception and concentrate on the DPA issues? I'm now very angry at the world (present company excepted)
---------- Post added at 00:58 ---------- Previous post was at 00:56 ----------
Just noticed they (Phorm) say the ISP doesn't have access to the User ID?
So who sets the cookie then? I thought that would come from the servers in the ISP network to which no-one else has access. Fishy