Father of The Internet Sounds Alarm For Net Users

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It could well be said that the father is putting out an all state alert against an errant son. Sir Tim Berners Lee, the man said to be behind the conception of the world wide web cautions users against storing personal data on the internet. Today, social networking and email sites abound. Facebook, MySpace and email sites are repositories of vast amounts of personal data. Tim Berners Lee urged caution against this very habit and said that Personal data is precious and deeply personal and should never be put on websites, not least social network ones like Facebook and MySpace. Surfers should bear in mind that their future generations will have access to that data. He pointed out that the internet has a longevity which far surpasses rock etchings, stone tablets and papyrus.

"Imagine that everything you are typing is being read by the person you are applying to for your first job. Imagine that it's all going to be seen by your parents and grandparents"

he said.
As the government and big business play out their roles of Big Brother, concerns have arisen over issues of individual privacy and consumer rights, even for such an open community as the world wide web.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has consistently slammed plans to put in place web-tracking systems that would enable ISPs to monitor and record the surfing habits of their customers. His opinion always has been that personal browsing history is the domain of the individual and not the internet company. Many web advertisers are planing to use usage tracking software to put in place targeted advertisements and promotional offers. According to him if ISPs are to be seen as essential utility services then they should be like conventional service providers delivering gas, electricity or water to a customer’s home, without any strings attached. As he says, "It's mine...and you can't have it!"

“I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer that that's not going to get to my insurance company and I'm going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5 percent because they've figured I'm looking at those books,”

Sir Tim Berners Lee's fresh net activism has come in the wake of reports that Britain's leading ISP providers plan to use Phorm, a tracking company to create targeted adverts.
If we go a bit back social networking giant Facebook faced strong criticism for Beacon, a mandatory advertising system that monitored user buying habits at certain Facebook-partnering online retail outlets and delivered that history for other Facebook users to see. Facebook eventually gave users an opt out mechanism.

Tim Berners Lee invented the Internet in 1989 to speed up information sharing among researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, more popularly known as CERN. He was recently in Britain promoting the new field of 'Web science,' concerned with studying the Internet in an attempt to guide its future development and help prevent annoying problems, like spam.