Okay, so I know that I am a bit behind with all this, but thought I would post the link to the petition, in case any others had missed the boat on this one too.

Basically, the deal is that several companies (although some have pulled out now, due to the scandal) were to sell the browsing habits of customers to a new 'advertising company' called Phorm. The company in question had previously been a large producer of Spyware. Where things get interesting, is that BT conducted a highly illegal 'trial-run' in 2006/7, so if you are a BT broadband customer, there is a possibility that your browsing habits have already been sold.

Here is more information:

[url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_roundup/

And here is a link to a petition to stop this kind of thing happening again:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/ispphorm/

The whole thing has been important enough for the European Commission to get involved, asking the British Government why no action has been taken. If you have broadband with BT (or any of their subsidiaries) it might be worth getting in touch to find out what their stance on Phorm is - to get the choice to opt-out in the future.

There is no stopping this kind of thing from happening.

Man, you people are picky! Fine, so maybe it can't be stopped, but at least people can know about it. Granted, 99% of people are too lazy or apathetic to actually do anything constructive, but there are some people who still want to take an active part in their own destiny.

Or something. Anyway, you still owe me a beer.

The only way to hide your browsing habits from enemies is to not have any - to turn off your computer and never turn it on again. What kind of fun is that?

It's not allll bad. Like for instance...




Privacy on the internet's always seemed impossible, to me at least. I'm sure I'm on many a government watch-dog list, if only for the number of times I've Googled horse-porn.