British ISPs BT, Virgin Media, and TalkTalk are seriously considering using Phorm, an Internet tracking system, to track all page views of its 11 million customers.

The potentially lucrative system creates an anonymous profile of a surfer’s interests which is then used by retailers to target them with relevant adverts.

Phorm insists it is far less intrusive than the existing tracking and profiling of surfers by internet search engines such as Yahoo and Google. It says there is nothing to link a name or address to the profile and customers can also opt out.

This is deep packet monitoring and they are lying to you when they say that the profile is anonymous.  If it were anonymous, they wouldn’t be able to track you and target ads at you.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee believe that this is an invasion of privacy and it shouldn’t be allowed.

It reveals huge amounts about people’s lives, their loves, their hates and fears. People use the web when they are in a crisis.

‘It is very important that you can use the internet without a thought that, when we click, a third party will know what we clicked on in a way that might effect how our insurance premium changes, whether we can get life insurance or another job.’

BT has already conducted three secret tests of Phorm without informing its customers.  While it may have violated EU law, BT felt free to conduct the tests and, now, plans to fully implement Phorm.

Many users already use some sort of adblocker and this will only increase their use.  People will learn to use proxies and confuse companies like Phorm.  There are already programs that you can use that will randomize your surfing so things like Phorm will be thoroughly confused.  After using such programs, people will also switch to ISPs that don’t practice such invasions of privacy.

You can also petition the UK government to stop this from happening.