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"The Guardian has pulled out of its targeted advertising deal with Phorm, following a public outcry over plans for the UK's three largest ISPs to report the browsing habits of their customers in exchange for a cut of revenues...

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We are designing high-performance algorithms and developing reliable, fault-tolerant and scalable real-time systems that can handle massive volume of data for in-depth analysis of user behavior to enable targeted advertising.

Essential Job Functions
- Develop high-performance algorithms for precision targeting
- Research and investigate academic and industrial data mining, machine learning and modeling techniques to apply to our specific business case

Requirements
- Ph.D. in computer science or related
- 3+ years industry experience in data mining and machine learning.
- Internet advertisement technology and distributed computing related experience highly desirable.

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Where are the indignant people who object strenuously when a website sets a tracking cookie? Where is the outrage that was caused by the Sony rootkit or Windows validation? And the list goes on.

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What I do care about is that my information is shared with a third party for profit without my knowledge which has already happened.

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If it passed, computer users could request that companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft, which routinely keep track of searches and surfing conducted on their own properties, not follow them around. Users would also have to give explicit permission before these companies could link the anonymous searching and surfing data from around the Web to information like their name, address or phone number.

Because there is no federal legislation on these subjects, Mr. Brodsky’s bill — and, to a lesser extent, the one in Connecticut — could set interesting precedents.

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said by Just Basics :

The opt-out given by Phorm really isn't an opt-out at all - it stops the targeting advertising, but all your requests are still going through their servers, you no longer have a direct internet connection, and they still get to profile you.

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After reading about how Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo collect information about people online and use it for targeted advertising, one New York assemblyman said there ought to be a law.

So he drafted a bill, now gathering support in Albany, that would make it a crime — punishable by a fine to be determined — for certain Web companies to use personal information about consumers for advertising without their consent.

And because it would be extraordinarily difficult for the companies that collect such data to adhere to stricter rules for people in New York alone, these companies would probably have to adjust their rules everywhere, effectively turning the New York legislation into national law.

“Should these companies be able to sell or use what’s essentially private data without permission? The easy answer is absolutely not,” said the assemblyman who sponsored the bill, Richard L. Brodsky, a Democrat who has represented part of Westchester County since 1982.

Mr. Brodsky is not the only lawmaker with this idea. In Connecticut, the General Law Committee of the state assembly has introduced a bill that focuses on data collection rules for ad networks, the companies that serve ads on sites they do not own.

The New York bill, still a work in progress, is shaping up as much broader. Although it is likely to see some tinkering before it comes to a vote — which Mr. Brodsky hopes will happen this spring — it aims to force Web sites to give consumers obvious ways to opt out of advertising based on their browsing history and Web actions.

If it passed, computer users could request that companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft, which routinely keep track of searches and surfing conducted on their own properties, not follow them around. Users would also have to give explicit permission before these companies could link the anonymous searching and surfing data from around the Web to information like their name, address or phone number.

Because there is no federal legislation on these subjects, Mr. Brodsky’s bill — and, to a lesser extent, the one in Connecticut — could set interesting precedents.

In recent weeks, Microsoft and Yahoo have sent lobbyists to meet with Mr. Brodsky, and AOL, a unit of Time Warner, is planning a meeting. Unlike most Web companies, Microsoft favors legislation about online privacy and advertising practices and has lobbied federal lawmakers to establish regulations, said Michael Hintze, associate general counsel for Microsoft.

Microsoft asked Mr. Brodsky to broaden his bill to include all sorts of companies that serve ads around the Web, not just those that show ads based on users’ behavior. Such a change would create a bill that more clearly includes Microsoft’s chief competitor, Google.

Mr. Brodsky says he has asked the Web companies point-blank if they would support legislation similar to what he has proposed. Microsoft gave him a firm “yes,” but Yahoo, he said, seemed to be opposed to any sort of regulation. Yahoo declined to comment on its meeting with Mr. Brodsky.

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Big companies like AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo, and smaller ones like Revenue Science, are gathering various crumbs about online behavior to use in their advertising systems. They are limited to gathering data from their own sites and their networks of affiliates.

Eventually, cellphone companies will start to face the same choice. If there is a G.P.S. unit in your phone, it will be able to keep track of what stores you visit, among many other things.

All these partial schemes may well be rendered as useless as a blindfolded spy by some new companies that want to tap into the records of Internet service providers. Their objective: following every single click users make. That way, in theory, they have the best ability to find ads that can indulge each users passion of the moment. Among the companies trying to build out this sort of system are Phorm, NebuAd, FrontPorch.

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