Tim Berners-Lee, one of the creators of the world wide web, says he doesn't much care for the new behavioral advertising services emerging that track online user activity in order to provide more specific ads. In his specific case he's talking about Phorm, a UK ad outfit that once developed rootkits -- who now wants to be trusted with ISP user privacy. They've begun tracking user clicks via ISP network hardware, something the WWW creator isn't ready for:While the CEO of the largest such system (so far) operating in the U.S. told us they don't track medical data, this is a young industry and there's likely many outfits that will be eager to sell such data wherever possible. It seems that getting consumers to accept this kind of tracking will be the first step. In Phorm's case, the one-time rootkit developer is trying to convince users that their user-tracking ad system is actually a useful anti-phishing solution.

Though some ISPs are making this an opt-in affair, it appears that most are making it opt-out, and are sneaking their use of this technology very quietly into ISP terms of service updates. One user directs our attention to an interesting new article by the folks at Lavasoft on Phorm.