UK ISPs tracking you to insert targeted ads

It appears that some of the big UK ISPs are intending to track surfing habits in order to insert targeted ads into the pages you go to. Something like getting ads in the Google search results page. Except that with Google you’re using a free service by choice, or the webmaster of a site serving Google ads has paid Google for the service. Plus Google ads are based on the content being served, not on your surfing.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/18/2033202

Another question is related to copyright. Does anyone have the right to directly modify your web page like this? The general consensus appears to be that it may be implicitly permitted, just as caching in the first place is implicitly permitted unless you have the Cache-Control: no-cache header field explicitly denying permission to cache.

There is a remedy that especially you UK developers may want to consider, the Cache-Control: no-transform header field.

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.9.5

This implies that the cache or proxy MUST NOT change any aspect of the entity-body that is specified by these headers, including the value of the entity-body itself.

That sounds scary and a bit abusive. There must be a catch to this, like the hosting will be free or something like that. To just stick adds on someones site does not sound like something that could or should be done or even considered.

Well, the advertising companies involved are offering to pay the ISP for tracking the user’s surfing habits and inserting the ads into the pages, so there’s money involved here.

I hope it’s another marketing idea that gets buried with the person responsible for dreaming it up!