ThePudding Doesn't Taste Too Good

Monitored free calls from ThePudding.com

by Rupert Sharp
of http://www.oyster-web.co.uk

Last updated: 9 Oct 2007

The 'be afraid, be very afraid' principal is most definitely applied to this new gem in the world of line-tapping, it was only a matter of time until advertisements spread further than targeting text and code and moved on to speech. ThePudding is a provider for free calls (currently only to North America) that can be utilised through your browser in exchange for allowing ThePudding to monitor what you’re saying and bring up adverts it thinks you’re interested in, based on what your talking about in the conversation. I don't trust it an inch despite the fact the idea in itself seems pretty sound and useful; it all depends on how much you are willing to put faith in the Hosting company to keep your calls private. Pudding media (the parent company) has said that it does not record phone calls nor use human monitoring to administrate them but do you believe everything you read?

Being of the paranoid persuasion I never give out certain personal details unless I'm absolutely positive the site is trustworthy and even then I usually use my alias or say I live down a well in Cornwall, so the idea of allowing a site to listen in on my personal conversations freaks me out. I think websites have too much of our information already, this is proven by sites such as Spock.com whose sole purpose is to harvest information about web-dwellers and display it to the public, what's stopping them doing the same here? Or covertly recording conversations that have Keywords such as 'terrorists' or 'guns' in them? As I say I'm not shunning the idea, nor am I accusing ThePudding personally of being anything other than trustworthy but the big brother idea still creeps me out.