First ever post

This is the first blog post I have ever made, so I wouldn't get your hopes up that it will be any good.

So today I am mostly being annoyed by Phorm. For some reason my ISP has decided that it will be a very good idea if it sells my information to a third party marketing company in order to make a little extra cash on the side.

My rights to prevent this from happening are enshrined in law, but these cheeky chappies have a cunning way to sidestep the whole problem, instead of opting in to the service you have to opt out with a cookie. Now this prevents a slight problem, everytime you clear your cookies you have to remember to opt out of the service again, so if you forget (or someone else in the family deletes their browsing history) then you are automatically stuck back into their system.

I say stuck back into the system as if there is any way to stay out of it, there isn't. Regardless of your preferences your data will still get sent to the analysing machine, the cookie merely tells it to leave the data alone. Whats the problem with that I hear you cry, well aside from the fact that this company have an extremely shady past and shouldn't be trusted to look after a rock, because the data still enters the system all it would take would be a 'technical glitch' for it all to be used anyway. More dangerously a disgruntled employee could potentially use it to view credit card numbers and steal your identity!

No its not scare mongering, its true. Despite the companies reassurances to the contrary the technology could feasibly be used to view such information which is why this ridiculous opting out system is not any protection at all.

I still don't understand why my ISP believe this is their data to sell. BT don't listen in on my phonecalls in order to determine what telemarketing to send me, and I sure as hell hope Royal Mail don't open my post and read through that to better target leaflets at me. The internet is just another form of data delivery no different to that of a telephone line or a traditional mail service and my information is still my information regardless of whose network it passes through.

Personally I see an end to my contract with Virgin Media, although Phorm say they are expanding everywhere so how long I can jump providers for to maintain my privacy is anyones guess.

See here for more info: http://www.badphorm.co.uk/page.php?2