Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Phorm - Family friendly?

Over the last week there has been a lot of talk about Phorm.

A system that matches users' web surfing habits to adverts must ensure sensitive sites are black-listed from tracking, a privacy report has said.

Phorm's online technology is set to be rolled out by three of the UK's biggest ISPs, BT, Virgin and Talk Talk.

ref: BBC News

Even Sir Tim Berners-Lee has concerns about it.

The creator of the web has said consumers need to be protected against systems which can track their activity on the internet.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee told BBC News he would change his Internet provider if it introduced such a system.

ref:  BBC News

Now I am wondering if such a system is family friendly.  What I mean by this is that my home PC / Internet connection is used by the whole family, and I visit sites, such as adult humour, that I do not allow my daughter to go to, for example b3ta.com.  So if my ISP was to implement Phorm could it distinguish between different users going over the same Internet connection.  Would my daughter start to see adverts relating to my surfing habits?  Like any responsible parent I monitor and guide my daughter on what she watches on television and what she sees on the Internet, yet it appears to me that an ISP using  Phorm could well take some of this control away from me.

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