Consider8: Background

Curiosity over other people’s whereabouts, doings, and opinions has always been strong, for many different reasons. Merchants and marketers are interested in understanding customers and their preferences. Politicians are interested in people’s opinions in a whole range of issues. And most people are interested in what just about everyone else do, say, and think–just look at fashion and trends. The methods for collecting this type of information are many, ranging from simply throwing a glimpse at the square outside the shop to assess the customer base of the day to formal polls and statistical analysis.

With broad adoption of information technology throughout society, there is a whole range of new information that can be used to gain an understanding of people’s behavior. This information can typically be classified as byproducts of some other activity, including the use of cash and credit cards, automatic toll gates, cellular telephony, wireless networking, and just about everything related to the Internet.

However, how to ethically exploit this information is not straight forward. This is clearly illustrated by the failures of Phorm in the UK, and NebuAd in the US. Both companies were mining the Internet habits of individuals by means of deep packet inspection of Internet traffic in order to target direct advertising. Both companies have received massive critique from both the public and governments.