According to the Grauniad, Google thinks it can glean information about an individual's preferences and personality type by tracking their online behaviour. This will then be sold to advertisers who will make your web-experience a nightmare.

The profiling will reveal to advertisers if you are more likely to be aggressive, hostile or dishonest and will follow you around until you are dead. It would also be interesting if it ended up on your credit record.

The plans are detailed in a patent filed by Google in Europe and the US last month, it has been slammed by human rights groups.

Sue Charman of online campaign Open Rights Group was "deeply disturbed" by a company holding a psychological profile.

Google says it did not have any plans to roll out the technology in the near future, and that it was just one of a large number of patents that it has filed in recent months. µ

L'INQ
Grauniad