[Traduk]

Sirius,

A cookie has limited capability so I see a possible way of this working as follows. This is based on the sequence to stop logging as outlined on the third party site.

VM will most probably have scanning equipment at the UBR or next step up and all customers are switched on by default. The relevant parts in the data stream are collected and logged against a user's number with collection on by default.

The way to opt out is to have a cookie from the third party site which is switched to monitoring off. The switch off can only be achieved by having the cookie loaded on the user's machine and actively going to the site and electing to switch off. The switch off facility is almost certainly going to session only with the cookie inactive (monitoring on) unless the visit and election for off is the first act by the customer on each session start. That would entail that if someone wishes to have the scanning off for most of the time then they would have to use the third party site as a home page and switch off at every session start.

The above opt in by default pretty well ensures that 99.99% of all customers are monitored all the time. Blocking cookies would under such a method only prevent the customer from using the switch off facility and the company's involved could easily say that customers that do so are opting to refuse the use of the opt out and scoring an own goal.

Personally I am not against profiling at all and use reward cards at some stores which, for a small financial incentive, allow my purchases to be categorised into demographic and wealth classed purchase patterns. I can pick and choose when to have the cards scanned and forfeit the rewards as I wish. If however my every move in the store was monitored by someone looking over my shoulder or a deal was struck with credit card companies to gain that information without reward or choice then I would never use such store again.

My biggest fear is something that I dismissed a few years ago as being over the top is on line fraud. Amongst friends and family I now know of a rapidly growing number of people who have had thousands stolen from cards and bank accounts via fraud. On the extremely rare occasions that the culprits have been caught, the source has been somebody in a position to see and extract from data streams. There have been numerous instances, over the past few months, of data protection violations and given that Government bodies and banks are cavalier with our details are we going to let some ad sharks look over our shoulders.