On Phorm?

The BBC published an article today about the new internet advertising company "Phorm". The artcile mainly concerns itself with the privacy issue of the company, inherent in the way that it functions.
Phorm plans to collect a users specific interests by remembering websites they visit and offering more adverts to the individual who vists websites related to those adverts. For example, a person who looks at a lot of sites about wine, would recieve advertisements for wines when they visit a website using Phorm.
The concept is very impressive and could help to sell more products which users want, however, it is not unique. Google have been employing such a technique for a while now on their "Gmail" service. The adverts which appear are relative to the content of your email, an email about radio will result in adverts for radio stations or radio products being displayed around the page.
The issue of privacy being comprimised is something to consider, it will not be possible for a user to opt out of such a service and so Phorm will know most of the websites they have visited, but is that such a bad thing?
Some would argue that those with nothing to hide should not worry about it, but it seems the public generally dislike others knowing their surfing habits, no matter how innocuous they may be.
The technical details behind the function of such a firm are complicated and detailed, I have found another blog which explains these better than I ever could, this is available here. Also on this blog there is a link to a much more detailed document explained the exact process of Phorm.

The article from the BBC reports further on the issues of privacy - To view the article click here