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UK ISPs To Start Tracking Your Surfing To Serve You Ads
TechDirt has an interesting article about a UK-based company that is trying to work with ISPs to make use of user surfing data to serve targeted ads. "Late last year, we heard about a company that was trying to work with ISPs to make use of that data themselves to insert their own ads based on your surfing history -- and now we've got the first report of some big ISPs moving into this realm. Over in the UK three big ISPs, BT, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media have announced plans to use your clickstream data to insert relevant ads as you surf through a new startup called Phorm."
Yes. It's part of the data returned by Google. The ISP has to snoop the data stream and insert its own traffic into it.
ISPs should be forbidden from altering the data stream unless they own the content that's being transferred.
I think so! Under my understanding of the UK Data Protection Act (IANAL), this would have to be an opt-in scheme via a tick box on the contract. It used to be opt-out but this was changed.
Under the terms of the law an organization may not share personal data to another party without your consent. It's a pretty decent law, I don't know how the hell it got passed.
I can CHOOSE to use google to surf the net. There are many search engines. I can also use Tor to access Google anonymously if I'm paranoid.
My ISP choices are limited, and I can't change them as fast as a search engine either. Plus once I click onto a site, google pretty much loose track where I am, especially if I block ads.
ISP can know every place I go.
Moreover, I don't pay google to use their service. I do pay an ISP. They have an revenue stream.
So I think your analogy is flawed.