The inventor of the World Wide Web, British scientist Tim Berners-Lee, has warned consumers that their online activities could be monitored by the Internet providers so as to create “personalised” adverts.
Berners-Lee, who invented the Web in 1989 while working at the Cern atom-smashing laboratory in Geneva, cautioned that the system being introduced by leading Internet service providers could be abused. He said consumers need to be protected from software that monitors which websites they visit.
The World Wide Web is the universe of network-accessible information, the embodiment of human knowledge. It began as a networked information project at CERN, where Berners-Lee, now Director of the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C], developed a vision of the project. The Web has a body of software, and a set of protocols and conventions.
British Internet service providers, including TalkTalk, BT and Virgin, are considering adopting tracking software from a company called Phorm, the Daily Mail of Britain said.
“I feel it is very important that my Internet service provider supplies Internet to my house like the water company supplies water to my house,” Berners-Lee said. “I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer, that it is not going to get to my insurance company and I am going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5 per cent because they have figured I am looking at those books,” the scientist was quoted as saying in the report by the daily.
Phorm, however, claimed its software can help consumers by warning them about potentially dangerous sites as it provides relevant adverts, the report said.
The software company claimed its system does not store any information that could identify someone.