Frank_Rizzo - 8:03 pm on Apr 16, 2009 (gmt 0)

Yoshimi do you have curtains in your house?

If you do why?

It's not that you may have something to hide it is just that you have a right to privacy.

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The ISP does not see your information: it is a mere conduit connecting you to websites. What deep packet inspection technology does is put a bug in the center of the ISP to copy and process most of all that goes in and out - for customers who opt in AND who opt out.

Here's a few analogies.

Customers
The Royal Mail delivers mail in the UK. It's purpose is to collect mail from mail boxes and deliver to recipients addresses. They are not allowed to open that mail.

Now what DPI technology does is to open up the letter, scan it (to make a full copy), process the keywords, then seal up the letter and send it on it's way (without either the sender or recipient noticing the intercept and copy).

The DPI technology will then make a profile of the recipient and start sending 'a better class / more relevant' junk mail to that person.

Even if the person does not 'opt-in to the ads' he / she will still have letters intercepted and processed.

Website owners
It's not just customers who should be worried about DPI it should be website owners.

Let's say you have a site which sells cameras. If a phormed visitor goes to your site you will allow phorm to build up a profile of that visitor.

The visitor may read reviews and articles on Canon cameras - reviews you spent ages researching and creating.

Now when that visitor goes to other sites (phorm partners: ft.com ....) he /she will start seeing ads for Canon cameras supplied by your COMPETITORS.

Think long and hard about that one until it sinks in.

You see the difference between google and phorm is that google uses keywords from your site to drive traffic to your site.

Phorm uses keywords from your site to drive traffic to your competitors.