London, April 23 : Web founder Tim Berners-Lee has warned against Internet service providers' plans to show specific advertisements to their clients depending on their browsing habits.

The MIT professor, at a Web conference in Madrid, expressed his concern over the new software, entitled Webwise, which replaced standard online ads with those of the browser's dominating interests.

The 53-year-old said that the users needed to be shielded from such systems that kept a record of viewers' activity and threatened their online privacy.

"I just want to know that when I click on a link it is between me and the web, and the internet service provider is not going to immediately characterise me in different categories for advertising or insurance of for government use," the Telegraph quoted him as saying.

"The postman does not open my mail, the telephone company does not listen to my telephone conversations. Internet use is often more intimate than those things," he added. (ANI)