I must say I’m shocked at the swiftness that the Information Commissioners Office (ICO)has responded to the Phorm system. The ICO has warned Phorm that the system must be opt in - something that a lot of people have been screaming for ages.

I’m a little worried about Phorm’s response which doesn’t recognise anything the ICO has said about being an opt in service - lets hope it’s just saving face rather than thinking of trying to run with it anyway.

There are still questions regarding data interception but I’m sure the pressure will be kept up and matters resolved. We might actually see a system that could be successful but go about getting the information the correct and ethical way.

Full ICO Phorm statement.

I’m sure everyone remembers the various safety films while we were children my personal favourite was “Charlie says…”. A current example for road safety is Hedgehogs.

After the posts about social networking regulation and safety I spotted an article from over in the US that shows schools in the state of Virginia are required to give Internet safety lessons. It’s a great idea making sure that children are aware of the dangers online so they know how to protect themselves to a certain extent or tell someone if they aren’t sure.

A combination of various methods of protecting children such as this should be taken and this way the chances of exposure to dangerous situations could be reduced.

Just a quick note to follow up the previous post “Social networks require regulation”. The general conclusions from others and myself was that regulation is very difficult. I was quite surprised to read that the Government have actually come up with a good scheme to help the protection of children on social internet sites. Essentially sex offenders would be banned from certain websites by distributing their registered email addresses to the said websites. In addition having email addresses not registered with the authorities could land the offender with 5 years inside.

This isn’t a foolproof solution but it’s certainly a step that should hope to discourage some parties.

Not content at being a hugely ineffective, unaccountable, inefficient behemoth BT have now decided to break the law by monitoring 30,000 users without permission for a trial of the potential Phorm system! An alternative opinion on Phorm is here.

Personally I don’t have a massive problem with the idea behind the system if it means I get targeted adverts that I might actually be interested in. However there are still major questions about privacy and surely this should be an opt in system not just be rolled out for every user?

As for trialling without people’s permission - which planet are these people on? Hang em all!