I can really recommend looking at the link to the BBC provided by PAYNEARDO.
The replies nicely try to sidestep or confuse about who owns what and what is passed to whom regarding the profiler. No real answers though. These people must truly think we are all stupid and will be be confused by claiming who owns what and what will be passed on to where as though it means anything other than a poor attempt to confuse.
Subject to change I currently believe that the profiler which belongs to the ISP (guess they bought it) only contacts Phorm in its many guises when you allow adverts from their paid up sites. I believe that whether you opt in or out you are mirrored to the profiler and always will be but as that belongs to the ISP, Phorm washes their hands of it even though they wrote the software and will need to monitor software performance etc. Of course they need to do what has to done with the software and no more caring a way could be but to do that in real time (maybe).
The question I posed about a total by-pass (on this forum) was answered with the party line of it belongs to the ISP (furiously washing hands).
You all must read the last paragraph (BBC link) when a question was asked with legal implications. It is like a malfunctioning robot... drop interactive mode and go into script mode. So funny
BTW They have changed many of their sites around from last week and stopped serving cookies from all bar one site that I visited today. They are adopting a very very low profile which is surprising for a profiling company