Phorm – Good or Bad?

Phorm, for those of you who don’t know, is the logging of personal information to provide targetted adverts to the user.  In recent years this has been hotly debated across the EU as to wether or not it is in fact legal.

Many people do not like to have their search information recorded, but lets face it, it’s not just the internet that does this.  Your local supermarket, be it Tescos or Walmart will be recording what you buy and when you buy it so it can send out advertising to you on the right day about the right products.

Personally I could not care any less if a company recorded information abotu what i bought, searched for or similar, I would prefer to have adverts relevant to me rather than an inbox full of, to put it bluntly, bullshit.

I find this move a hysterical response to an ‘internet phenomenon’ and that this is just anotehr example of nanny state behaviour appearing from the EU.  Many internet companies succeed becasue tehy can see that a certain number of people like certain things, if this information is removed or becomes unreliable the tax losses for governments nationwide will be pretty damn big as companies go under and new ones cannot start.

I use google keyword stats regularly so am more than well aware of how advert targetting is imperative to the survival of small business on the internet.