22 April, 2009

Tim Berners-Lee is right.

Plans by Internet service providers to deliver targeted adverts to consumers based on their Web searches threaten online privacy and should be opposed, the founder of the Web said Wednesday.

"I just want to know that when I click on a link it is between me and the Web, and the Internet service provider is not going to immediately characterise me in different categories for advertising or insurance of for government use," Tim Berners-Lee told a Web conference in Madrid.

"The postman does not open my mail, the telephone company does not listen to my telephone conversations. Internet use is often more intimate than those things," he added.

New software called Webwise allows Internet service providers to show adverts to their clients based on their Web browsing habits instead of based on the content of a single Web page as currently happens.
Of course, there are SO MANY who want to listen and it is not just governments.

WP

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