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Berners-Lee Rejects Tracking

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the along-with-everyone-else dept.

kernowyon writes "The BBC has an interview with Sir Tim Berners-Lee during his visit to the UK on their website currently. In it, he voices his concern about the practice of tracking activity on the internet — with particular reference to Phorm. Quotes Sir Tim with regard to his data — "It's mine — you can't have it. If you want to use it for something, then you have to negotiate with me.""

3 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Old Skool - Static by Janos421 · · Score: 4, Informative

    So, how do we get this done ? We have to find many trackers and activate them regularly to make noises to pollute the signal ? Anyone knows of such a project ? Well that's exactly the purpose of obfuscation tools like SquiggleSR and TrackMeNot, two Firefox extensions. They generate fake queries on search engines to create noise and deceive data mining algorithms.

    As developer of SquiggleSR, I was thinking to extend it to simulate fake browsing as well to create more noise and deceive track based on cookies. But since some ads are charged when they are displayed, this could actually be assimilated to something like "fraudulent view". What do you think?
  2. On behalf of Phorm by Phorm+Comms+Team · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hi all As the name suggests I work for the Phorm Comms Team. In response to Tim's comments and the raft of commentary tht has followed, we also believe that it is wrong to store Internet users' personal data. Our technology is a real turning point in the protection of privacy online - it does not store personally identifiable information, does not store IP addresss and nor does it store browsing histories. By contrast, ad targeting from other major Internet companies means that potentially identifiable personal data is stored for over 12 months before it is even anonymised. Also, because these companies reach nearly all UK Internet users, consumers effectively have no real choice about being targeted in this way. With the Phorm technology, users can choose - they can opt out or in at any time; and again, no personal data is stored . We look forward to speaking to Tim Berners Lee to explain how our technology is a ground breaking advance in delivering targeted ads while protecting privacy online and consumer choice, as we have with other experts.

  3. Re:Old Skool - Static by Dude+McDude · · Score: 4, Informative

    I guess they (Phorm) just track web URLs Nope. The content of every page requested by a user gets sent to Phorm's profiler for analysis, but the profiler ignores* the contents of form fields.

    * according to Phorm, which, in the company's previous incarnation as 121media, was a spyware peddler.