Phorm have been fairly big news here in the UK recently as they claim to have signed deals with the big 3 UK ISPs which would give them 70% coverage.

However it looks like no matter what they've been telling investors what they want to do is illegal. Hopefully this turns out to be the case!

Even if they do manage to keep the data anonymous I can't help thinking things will go wrong and data will get leaked, breakdowns will increase and speed will drop.

There's quite a lot of reading on it here:
http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=phorm

eh, wouldn't bother me a bit. I'd rather see a computer related ad on a site rather than Viagra ads...

I really want to know all the companies that engage in this practice so I can blacklist them, and if needed, immediately cancel my subscription. Newspapers dig up a lot of worthless dirt to smear people with, and a lot of it ends up being bogus, but fortunately, sometimes they do useful investigations too.

Judging by the strange and random ads that target me I doubt I am currently a victim :)

Incidentally... this very much seems like it would be considered illegal wiretapping. Can anyone explain why it would not be so considered?

"for fear of customer revolt" --- man let me see.... they charge the crap out of us for "unlimited" service (that that with a grain of salt) and then find another revenue input at relatively no cost to them, but yield much more "free" income and yet every year they raise prices.... hmmm... I could care less about "targeted" advertising and care more that they are essentially pushing ad based service yet still charge the same or more per month...

Yeah that would constitute a "customer revolt" in my book. Have you guys ever seen shareholder annually distributed income/expense reports for some of these companies... it is ridiculous to say the least.

Mojo

If they can't trace the data, back to individual users, then this isn't a problem. As long as they are just doing general population trending, then no lines have been crossed. If they can recall specifically where you, as an indivdual, have browsed, then we have a problem.