Here's a story which raises the question of how much - or little - your ISP might respect your privacy when browsing the Net.
They are apparently even more sneaky and underhand than the biggest Internet entity currently not being evil (or whatever their motto is), Google.
Your ISP could be gathering data from your browsing behaviour - and you probably didn't let them know that they could do that and they probably didn't tell you they would (OK, maybe it is in the small print, but I bet it's not crystal-like in its clarity) - and they might be selling it on to online advertising companies, who can then target users with more specific ads. Advertising (more than $21Billion in 2007) is what drives the online economy.
It's why social media sites, like MySpace, Facebook et al are seen as so lucrative. Millions of users just waiting to be served ads or, better still, targetted ads based on their browsing behaviour or the apps they use whilst on those sites.
As the article points out, ISPs may not be selling data which identifies an individual user, but it's only a matter of time.
And if you think that you are not tracked online by ISPs or online retailers (and for anyone not using Googlemail), I'll give you my first-hand experience.
A few weeks back, I browsed dabs.com for a specific brand of KVM (keyboard-mouse-video) switch and I looked at 3 or 4 models.
A couple of hours later, I went to sing365.com to look up some song lyrics. Lo and behold on the homepage was an ad for dabs.com displaying the very items I had looked at earlier.
Spooky! And I wasn't dreaming - I tried it several times with the same results and I even pinched myself.
I can only imagine that Dabs is placing cookies on my PC with specific information about products I have looked at on their site - or maybe it's passing information between online advertisers. Either way, users are being tracked. Tracking cookies are easily removed with anti-spyware software, but advertisers know that, so they'll want new ways of gaining your attention.
I tried it again tonight, but without success. Maybe it was a fluke.
But even if it were, BT (which now owns Dabs) is leading the way in this respect with its deal with Phorm and that is the shape of things to come.
Information has always been used as a currency, but never more so, as more and more aspects of everyday life are digitised and put online.
But I'm sure that no-one is going to do anything untoward with any of the data we have knowingly or unknowingly given them access to. And, in case anyone from my ISP is reading, it wasn't me browsing those sites - someone had borrowed my PC.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to find a copy of the film, Enemy of the State, for some tips on how to disappear from society...and, yeah, you probably should still worry about Google ;)
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