Sunday, 9 March 2008

Phorm unique tracking

BBC ran a story earlier this week: Ad system 'will protect privacy'. Also the PMs site has a petition worth signing. The Phorm site has a privacy page with some more information.

Phorm say their tracking is anonymous, but surely they have miss-understood the definition of Anonymous (from the Greek ανωνυμία):

Oxford English Dictionary:

Anonymous a.
1. Not identified by name; of unknown identity.
2. Having no individual or unusual features.
Or as Chambers Dictionary puts it, "without character; nondescript"

Once I have been assigned a unique number which identifies every communication with me uniquely, surely I am no longer anonymous?

Once they have tagged my interests as "cars", "music", "travel" and "gadgets" surely that would constitute something along the lines of "individual or unusual features" ? I'm certainly no longer nondescript.

The honest way would be for Phorm to phrase it: "uniquely identified, profiled and browsing categories tracked by a number rather than a name".

Let's see what the Information Commissioner's research into Phorm reveals.

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