Phil Gyford

On Saturday the Guardian had a supplement about nutrition, including this article on how much fruit and veg you should eat. That attempts to link to a site called “Daily Diet Tracker” but gives a URL that doesn’t work. I’m guessing this is what it meant, and it looks handy: keep track of what you eat when, how much exercise you do, and what it’s all doing to you. But…

But the fact you can win a swish Mercedes simply for registering seemed a bit odd to me — where’s that kind of money coming from? Who’s running this site? A quick whois reveals the domain is registered to Interactive Prospect Targeting, “the UK market leader in the provision of digital direct marketing solutions”. Crafty. I assume the deal is to set up useful sites and use all that nicely opted-in data. Suddenly my enthusiasm has taken a cold shower.