Talk Talk to Get Phorm

Talk Talk is one of three UK ISPs to sign up to the Webwise service which sees user’s surfing habits tracked.

It follows 1,000 people signing a Downing Street online petition saying the system breaches customer privacy.

“We will be endorsing and recommending take-up of the system but we want to ensure that customers make their own decision,” said a spokesman for TalkTalk.

Talk Talk believes that there are 2 main benefits for customers who sign up.

“We feel customers will welcome the opportunity to get fewer irrelevant advertisements as well as benefit from the real-time anti-phishing alerts,” he said.

Phorm works by placing a cookie on a user’s machine that contains a randomised identifying number.  That cookie tracks websites visited and draws conclusions about a user’s behaviour in order to target more relevant adverts. 

Spyware?

Read on at the BBC site.