The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has criticised broadband ISP TalkTalk UK for failing to inform both itself and subscribers that it was conducting a controversial new security trial on them. The service, which the ICO also likened to Phorm (WebWise), follows customers around the internet and makes an anonymous record of the website addresses (URLs) they visit.

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Broadband ISP TalkTalk UK has issued a new update today that offers more detail on how its controversial future security system, which follows customers around the internet and makes an anonymous record of the website addresses (URLs) they visit, will work. Sadly TalkTalk still does not appear to recognise that URL addresses themselves can also hold private personal data, many of which would not ordinarily be visible to the public or search engines like Google.

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A new survey of 2,000 online British adults, conducted by credit rating experts at Experian, has revealed that over half admitted to making their passwords available on the internet. It also found that three of the most frequently used passwords were town of birth (18%), name of your past school (24%) and date of birth(27%); data that most people also tend to publish on public social networking website profiles.

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Broadband ISP TalkTalk UK has kindly responded to a number of the concerns we raised about its forthcoming security service. The controversial system shot into the headlines last month after several of the internet providers customers noticed that their website browsing activity was being monitored ("stalked") without consent.

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Friends Reunited, the social networking site that helps old school friends stay in contact with each other, appears to be winning its war against UK internet providers and their strict anti-SPAM (junk email) filters. At one point ISPs were blocking one in four (27%) of the 30 million emails sent by the site in May 2010 and 5.7% were getting through but still ending up in spam folders.

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The boss of internet search and advertising giant Google, Eric Schmidt, has told the Techonomy Conference in Lake Tahoe on the border between California and Nevada (states) in the USA that "in a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you".

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The first consultation covering Ofcom's Initial Draft Code of Practice for tackling internet copyright infringement / unlawful file sharing (p2p) by UK broadband ISP customers (original news), a requirement of the Digital Economy Act 2010 (DEA), finished on 30th July. Since then Ofcom has slowly been publishing its mass of responses and we've linked a small selection of the most interesting ones below.

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Broadband ISP TalkTalk UK has issued another statement in defence of its controversial new security system, which aims to block sites that contain malicious software by "anonymously" recording the URL addresses visited by its customers and comparing them against a list of good and bad websites. Sites that are not on one of its lists will also be "scanned for threats".

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