Let me introduce to you the ‘Open Internet Exchange’. Don’t be fooled by the deceivingly friendly-looking logo, this is by no means a good thing! The OIX is a ’service’ offered by a company called ‘Phorm‘ that is currently being tested by BT (and soon Virgin Media and TalkTalk). The OIX is something that your ISP will install, which will observe what websites you browse - and offer you advertising in accordance with those results. In short, if you’re constantly looking at websites to do with travel - it’s likely that most of the adverts you see will be travel related.

Phorm’s proprietary ad serving technology uses anonymised ISP data to deliver the right ad to the right person at the right time - the right number of times. Our platform gives consumers advertising that’s tailored to their interests - in real time - with irrelevant ads replaced in the process.

As fas as I can see, this has absoutly no benefit to the consumer unless you use internet advertising. Do people even use internet advertising any more? You may already be aware that FaceBook uses your personal information to generate audience specific adverts for you. For example, I changed my year of birth on my FaceBook account to 1952, and got the advert to the right. Although I might not agree with FB using my personal information, I signed up to the service - so that’s my problem.

OIX on the other hand are recording every move you make on the internet - are you happy with this? I’ll be digging around for a bit more information on this subject - but if you have any opinions, please let me know your thoughts!

Via The Gadget Show

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