SOURCE: BBC
Imagine a system that tracks where people go on the web, and builds up a profile so it can serve up adverts based on what that person has seen. A system to do just that could be switched on in the UK this summer. Spooked? Some people have been.
Phorm is the company behind the idea and it has had some pretty bad press of late. Some have questioned whether Phorm's "Webwise" ad-serving system is even legal in the UK.
But if it works in the UK it could go global. So is there anything to worry about?

Phorm says its system will not track "sensitive" sites like medical or adult content

Phorm says its aim is to deliver ads relevant to a web user. And it emphasises that the system never associates the pages someone sees with who they are. So how does it do that?
The tracking software sites on hardware installed at your ISP, which allocates a web users PC a random number. The system then intercepts each web page request made by that person and looks on that page to see if any of the text match up with its ad categories.
So a "camera" category might be looking for relevant keywords when people surf. If it finds them, that category is associated with the random number a person was allocated.
Records of the actual pages visited are destroyed.



Read the whole story, including recorded interview.