At last the European Union is investigate so-called "deep packet inspection" technologies (as provided by the likes of Phorm) on the grounds that consumer profiling by online advertising companies based on the technology will breach consumer's "basic rights in terms of transparency, control and risk", writes Martyn Warwick.
There is growing unease over deep packet inspection (or "deep and secret snooping into an individual's web browsing habits" as it should more properly be called) mainly because the technology can continue to track and record web activity by an individual subscriber even after cookies have been disabled.
The idea behind deep packet inspection system such as that from Phorm is that by tracking a web users browsing proclivities advertisers can send closely targeted ads to individuals based on their particular Internet histories and preferences. In other words, it's all about making more money.
In the UK, BT has controversially trialed the Phorm technology and Virgin Media and Talk Talk believed to be considering doing the same. ISP's across the rest of the European Union and elsewhere have also evinced considerable enthusiasm for the technology but many users have complained about the sneaky intrusiveness of systems like Phorm's.
The growing groundswell of concern has had little effect on the UK's Labour administration and the government has declined to mount any serious investigation into the implications of deep packet inspection and its possible compromising of an individual's right to privacy.
However, Meglena Kuneva, the EU's Commissioner of Consumer Affairs and Protection is in the vanguard of European resistance to the spread of deep packet inspection. She is Bulgarian by birth (June 1957) and having lived there when it was a communist state knows a thing or two about an imposed and institutionalised lack of privacy. Ms Kuneva says that the small print of the interminable and usually indecipherable "Terms and Conditions" that web users routinely (have to) accept to surf commercial websites are often in direct contravention of privacy legislation.
She says that the vast majority of Europeans have no idea what personal data is being collected, how it is being collected, how safely it is being stored, who has access to it and how it is used for commercial purposes. They are also unaware that, as things presently stand, even when individuals believe they have opted out of deep packet inspection, the myriad of technological (and invisible) hurdles placed in front of them means that may well have not actually done so.
Later on this week Ms.
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