Phorm, an online user habit-tracking tool, developed by U.S. company, Phorm, seems to be the latest of arguable advertising “advancements.” BT, Virgin and Talk Talk were the first to have signed up to demo these tools, but the mere method of presenting this to us, the users, simply makes us want to vomit.
The campaigner, Simon Davies, claims he’s impressed with the effort that has been put into minimizing the collection of personal information, but we’ve heard that kind of talk many times. This system will place a cookie, containing a randomized identifying number, on your machine and then track visited Websites in order to draw conclusions about user behavior.
This will benefit a user by targeting more relevant ads. Apparently, the identification number will be completely anonymous and there will be no profile created. Well, the “advanced” and “intuitive” ad systems so far have made us all believe that we need a bigger penis to surf the Internet, and we personally don’t see how that’s going to change. And no, we have no intention of becoming a monkey's uncle.
More here.