British Telecom spied on 36,000 of its Internet customers
BRITISH TELECOM (BT) covertly spied upon and built dossiers on thousands of its broadband Internet customers during 2006 and 2007, it said Thursday.
The company admitted that it conducted secret trials of software that tracked every web page visited by 36,000 randomly selected broadband users.
The trials used monitoring software provided by US spyware company Phorm. The software scans the content of every website that the user visits, catalogues keywords and builds a database of the customer's interests and online shopping habits. Phorm then uses that information to target the wibbler with advertising from retail brands that subscribe to its service.
BT's spying into its customers' web surfing habits only came to light after some users had unexplained problems with their computers or discovered evidence of monitoring. The company initially denied responsibility and told them that a software virus must have been to blame.
BT broadband customers have complained to the UK government. At least one is said to be considering legal action.
Privacy advocates are horrified, accusing BT of illegal data interception on a massive scale. Britain's Information Commissioner, the country's government privacy watchdog, reportedly has launched an investigation.
A BT executive claimed that the company's actions did not break any laws and that no personally identifying information was stored or divulged.
The company said it plans to conduct another trial in coming weeks, but now it will ask customers in advance to agree to participate. ยต
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are we really suprised at this?
I'm horrified to say that my ISP, Virgin Media, is planning to try the same thing.

Sign the petition on the House of Commons website.

I heard about this but didn't realise there was a petition. I've signed it now and I urge anyone who realises the implications of this to sign up too and continue to educate those close to you on what this is just the start of.

Education is the key here and the more aware the general public becomes then it only improves the case for getting stuff like this stopped before the snowball has become unstoppable.

I commend anyone who is prepared to stand up for their privacy rights in court. Hopefully, a precident will quash this outrageous case of breaching privacy in the name of massive advertising revenues through blatant, unauthorised monitoring of people's internet activity.

Sign the e-petition here:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ispphorm/

Regards
Alan
I'd say with 2 years worth of web data you'd make a fair stab at identifying each user... the idea it collects no PII is nonsense.

For example you'd very quickly work out who I am from forum posts, flickr usage etc
Well, as long as a person is not having 'evil' intentions (like bombing some tower or train), and so long as a person is willing to share loads of his/her information across several websites ... for ex., facebook, how does it matter when some one tries to find interweb usage pattern? 
Unless the company (BT for ex) finds a way to charge a customer more when he visits his favourite websites!