A new company called Phorm is trying to recruit internet providers and cable companies to use their new tracking system, which claims to be the most powerful on the market. It tracks consumers click by click, page by page and is currently being used in the U.K. to find out consumer information so that advertising agencies can better serve consumers on the web. The contracts that Delaware based Phorm has with British internet service providers promises to yield consumer information and detailed internet activity reports from 70% of British households. The British government is investigating the company, the implications of the tracking and its effects on the rights of British citizens. Louise Story of the New York Times reports how the tracking is maintained: ”Phorm says its technology protects users’ privacy by creating a random number that is associated with a person’s Web surfing patterns, rather than using a person’s name or other information. Phorm puts a cookie, a small bit of computer code, on a person’s computer to tie his or her Web-surfing to the random number and then saves only that number in advertising categories like types of cars or clothing.Although companies like Google employ users’ I.P. addresses to store their search queries, Phorm says that its technology blocks the company from finding out personal information, like people’s names, I.P. addresses that identify their computers, or information about health, for example.” Consumers in Britain are worried about this system even though they are able to opt-out of the tracking feature. Instead they would like to be able to opt-in to the system. What do you guys think of this? To me this seems to be a better way to track, gather information and tailor advertisements to people–but then again it does have an element of privacy-loss. How does this public exposure affect our private spaces and lives on the web? Is this system more ethical as opposed to Google’s tracker? Please post and tell me what you think!