Is Britain a Nanny State?
It seems that the European Union has taken the government of the United Kingdom to task over its handling of behavioral advertising. The EU is suing the UK. That’s right, suing.
This all started with Phorm, the behavioral advertising company that allowed Internet Service Providers to snoop on their subscribers. Phorm and the ISP’s did not consider this snooping; they consider it better customer service and a better user experience. The concept was that if the user was searching for Cats, they would be a better candidate to see advertising based on cats, such as cat litter. On one hand, this is not an unreasonable assumption. The problem was the the ISPs did not inform their subscribers that they were doing this.
An article titled “UK taken to court over web “secret surveillance” outlines the entire affair. It’s well worth a look.
Our opinion is that there is nothing wrong with this type of technology. The problem lies in the subscribers not knowing it was there. If they had the option to turn it on or off, then it might actually be useful.
