Phorm said it was setting up a new online advertising platform called the Open Internet Exchange, which any Web site will be allowed to join. Proceeds from ads that are shown on these publishers’ sites will be shared with BT, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media, which together represent more than two-thirds of the Internet access market in Britain… The three Internet providers have agreed to give Phorm access to customers’ surfing records, letting it track a Web user’s every move.
[From Providers get a piece of ad income – International Herald Tribune]
Is this acceptable? Wouldn’t I prefer to control my my personal browsing habits and partition them, parcelling out the data to people who I think relevant? Or, to put in another way, CRM or VRM? Since the original trials, Phorm have changed the system (remember, it is operated by your ISP, not by Phorm) to provide for an opt out, but I assume that ISPs will incentivise me heavily to opt in because
Phorm could be the future, a future in which targeted advertising is essential to the business model of an ISP.
[From The law of Phorm | OUT-LAW.COM]
This seems reasonable to me, but within some pretty strict bounds. For one thing, if my mobile operators knows that I’m ringing a bank’s mortgage enquires line, can then they bombard me with junk mail about mortgages? I hope not, and I wouldn’t expect the same from my ISP: I they know I’ve been looking at Abbey National’s mortgage offers, can they just sell this information to the highest bidder in a carousel of mortgage companies? Wait, I assert my moral right as the author of that idea…
