And what happens if you have bandwidth caps? Does these adds use it up as well?

Will those that don't opt out get a reduction in price to their Internet?

What about privacy concerns?

And also I would like to know where ISPs got this idea that they are entitled to 10000% return on investment?

You don't see phone companies listening in to your calls to target telemarketing calls to you. Why should this be any different?

Funny thing is back in the days of dial-up nobody could pull stunts like these because people could quickly switch to a competitor.

When it comes to high speed, providers essentially have quasi monopolies (often times you only have 2 choices: cable or DSL). Even when you sing up with a ma and pa internet provider, they are just essentially reselling their service. It kinda reminds me of the good old days of 1 telephone companies. But at least back then they where heavily regulated by the government to prevent them from abusing their monopolies. I don't understand why they have not done the same with ISP that are essentially in the same position again.

This civilization is quickly going to shit....

It might be profitable to run a secure proxy server in a central data center. Encrypt the communications between the customer and the proxy, Put the proxy right in (or near) one of the network backbone interconnect nodes. This wouldn't necessarily be an anonymizing proxy, it'd just be one that wouldn't inject advertisements.

Maybe call it "www.nofookingadds.com"?

Paris, because she has higher moral standards than most marketeers.

*sigh* Short answers for the non-UK newcomers.

* The issue of opting in/out, or cookies thereof, is simply a red herring.

* The problem is the unilateral "deep packet inspection" (DPI) or otherwise intercept of -your- traffic by -your- ISP. For whatever (business) reason -your- ISP presumes necessary, without a judicial warrant.

* No FF plugin will protect against this interception. (NoScript/AdBlock is *not* the answer here.)

Call -your- ISP and avow "Do. Not. Want." Then prepare to move to a more knowledgable ISP. (Or set up a SSL/VPN-based default route therethrough.)

That is all.

...that I use the Internet to BUY THINGS. I rarely do that. If I search for "War in Iraq" it doesn't mean I want to buy one of my own!

Repeat after me: (STILL) DO NOT WANT

"an enhancement coming soon to your web browsing experience"

Utter Bullshit!

Not in most of Europe; at least in several countries, opt-in is even required by law...

This isn't rocket science. The only way an ISP benefits from doing this monitoring is if they can sell it to someone. And companies will only buy if they see measurable value in it.

So, solving this is really simple. Never respond to the adverts. Ever.

When advertisers discover that the click-through rate is decreasing, they will stop paying for the service. When this happens enough, the ISP will stop using the equipment, as this is a cost that they can't pay for.

If you can't see 'em, you can't click 'em: Using a local hosts file (like the one available from http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm) helps prevent "the usual suspects" from delivering adverts to your computer. This works about 99% of the time.

In addition, things like NOSCRIPT or other advert blockers will also prevent the adverts from being displayed.

ON THE OTHER HAND...most computer users are so stupid that they would complain to the ISP if adverts STOPPED taking over their browser.

I don't know why I bother writing these things...it really doesn't matter, does it?

Here's another thought: get a bot on a lot of PCs that keeps sending search requests for big todgers, pairs hilton, etc. so that some poor schmuck ends up with all their "targeted" adverts being the same as their spam?

Hey, that'd work pretty well, wouldn't it?

"I am writing to inform you of an enhancement coming soon to my current account. In the future, 0.01% of all your financial transactions will be required to be forwarded to me, I won't SPEND the money, I just want just "hold" it for a few days to see what interest develops, after all, all anyone really wants is to know what I'm interested in don't they - it's not like they are actually STEALING anything. Obviously, you have the right to opt out of this, once in a lifetime opportunity but I am sure that once you see the smile on my face you will find it difficult to resist.

Should you wish to opt out, send a cookie (chocolate chip preferably) to "El Reg" in London England. If you fail to send me this cookie, or if it gets eaten, the original deal will be resumed and the 0.01% temporary bank redirection scim will be deemed to be legitimate."

Now then - IF there is any legality to this "interception" lark, the statement above is equally valid. As such it is now up to the companies involved to actively remove themselves from my scheme. I look forward in the very near future to VAST billions in my bank and a veritable MOUNTAIN of chocolate chip cookies should arrive at Vulture Central - ENJOY my pretty ones !!!

So these systems don't show MORE ads, just targeted ads.

Excuse my arrogance but does this mean that ads embedded in a web page, that a company has paid to display, will be removed and replaced by these Phorm style Ads?

Surely that's going to p*** off the original advertisers as well as any self respecting user that likes to retain an ounce of privacy...

Solution for web masters, the new opt-in parasites.txt standard;

http://www.parasitestxt.org/

The article says that we can opt-out using a local cookie. That means we cannot opt-out of the deep-packet-inspection, only the delivery of targeted advertisements, yes? I don't know about anyone else, but it really ticks me off that my ISP plans on inspecting the *content* of every packet I send and receive. Unfortunately, I live 250m too far from the telephone exchange to switch to DSL.

How can they anonymize the IP info they are collecting and still send targeted ads back to YOU? They can only collect all possible information and process and deep packet will only be the start of it. Heaven help you, but your family using the same pc will be getting all your ads most likely even if they have different sign-ons and email addresses since you will have the same IP (and they may, or may not understand about opting-in or opting-out, or simply mis-key their option and never go back to fix it). Won't matter since the gubmint will be looking at all of it anyway.