Recently, British Telecom announced it will partner with Phorm to track customer behavior and display ads to them accordingly.  There is considerable debate on whether their customers clearly understand the opt-in/opt-out process or not.  Does this sound vaguely similar to Facebook Beacon?  What is the next step beyond targeted ads?

To top it off, most broadband providers also provide TV and mobile services.   There’s definitely a fine balance between customer data privacy and targeted advertising.  Most consumers expect their vendors such as Amazon.com to retain their data and market to them accordingly.  But would they expect the same from a service provider who can view all of their online and possibly TV and mobile behavior?  Tell me what you think.