Phorm is a US company that has a commerical offering called Webwise. They’ve done deals with broadband providers BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk about collecting information about sites that consumers are viewing, and serve up adverts based on browsing habits, back to consumers.
Phorm claims that no personal information is extracted, and that this type of activity is the right side of the law, but privacy and data protection campaigners aren’t convinced, and neither is creator of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who wants ISPs to keep their hands off his data.
Many are now referring to this practice as “Data pimping” – your ISP selling your browsing history off to a third party for advertsing purposes.
An Online petition to Downing Street collected over 9,000 signatures in its first month from users concerned about their privacy – http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ . More on the Phormwatch blog