Last week it was announced that several of the UKs leading ISPs, including BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk, had signed a major new deal with Phorm, an advertising technology company.

However Phorms deal has raised concerns after it emerged that ISPs would be asked to hand over details of their customers’ personal surfing habits in order to help develop targeted advertising campaigns. The official press release reads as follows:


It's not clear precisely what data is to be shared, although information about the websites ISP customers visit is likely to be part of it. Unfortunately such practices are not uncommon in new media industries but The Register has uncovered additional cause for concern. It turns out that Phorm's boss, Kent Ertegrul, used to be a founder of PeopleOnPage, which was blacklisted as Spyware by Symantec and F-Secure (details):


There certainly appear to be some disturbing similarities between Phorms system and that of PeopleOnPage, although Phorm are adamant that the new method fixes past problems and is much more secure. There’s a good summary of the problems here.