Stock prices of Phorm, a controversial targeted advertising company, rose as much as 40% in trading yesterday.Phorm deliver targeted advertising based on user browsing habits by using deep packet inspection. The method has been widely accepted as controversial and has involved the UK police and UK Government.
BT has been trialing the system for some time with the latest 4 week trial concluding recently. The Phorm system allows BT to track and monitor every website that a user visits. BT puts this information into a database and is then able to insert its own advertising onto web pages that is targeted specific to those users.
In a joint statement from BT and Phorm yesterday BT said "Following the successful completion of analysis, both of the trial results and of any changes required for expansion, BT's expectation is to move towards deployment."
Yesterday Virgin Media launched their 50mbps service, Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett was questioned by the Guardian regarding the possibility of Phorm - "There will be a point in time when we use the intelligence in our network for targeted advertising," he said. Whether it will be through Phorm or some variation of Phorm's technology, however, he said it is still too early to tell.
In October, Orange ditched Phorm due to privacy concerns.
Phorm stock, courtesy of Google Finance
The cookie opt-out method also seems deliberately poor to ensure you accidentally (and unknowingly) opt back in again.
Phorm should be an *opt-in only* service, it's the only fair way it can work imo.
Last edited by ziadoz on 16 Dec 2008 - 11:50
If they change anything that seriously affects you (as this would), and there is no clause in the Terms of Use / Agreement / etc. telling you otherwise you are able to terminate a contract at anytime - it is a uk requirement to allow you to do this else companies could change there contracts without your agreement.
If you want out of a contract for a reason due to an issue with a compnay, if you read your contract you can usually get out of them early with no penalty. Mobile and internet contracts are classic examples as the companies change lots of things often - they will inform you when this happens (norm is via non recorded post so they cant proove you recieved it) - contracts usually specificy after you have been informed you have a time frame to cancel else they assume you agree to the new contract.
This is not acceptable!
This is not acceptable!
Dump BT?
Dump bloody VM as well
It should really be opt-in, anything like this should be opt-in...
And I certainly wouldn't opt-in for anything like this...
Thats exactly why they would make it opt-out. No one would opt-in to it so its wouldnt work would it??
So, you hope that everyone will have their privacy invaded by default and have to remember to opt-out?
Better than not being able to opt-out at all, which I believe was his actual point.
Of course there is, don't subscribe to an ISP that uses it. Vote with your feet.
1. Gentlemen often visits a bondage site at night time, phorm picks up his browsing tastes and records it against him.
2. Child is surfing the net the next day, and hey presto! An advert pops up for a double-ended d**do.
Not good.
I would guess that websites will need to add code onto their pages to show Phorm adverts. They couldn't by law intercept and modify web pages from people who don't want to show Phorm adverts on their page.
I had to enqure with BT as our business broadband is with them, and they said that phorm is only going to residential broadband 'AT THE MOMENT'. I'm pretty sure that they will do the business customers at some point too.
**** companies the pair of 'em.
Im so glad ive switched to Zen, i even got tech support on a Saturday by someone who had a clue and didnt just tell me the problem is at my end and route me though 18 call centres in India.
How PHORM works in diagram form
The only difference between this and DNS poisoning is that it the ISP doing it, not some hacker group.
Perhaps all those links in emails that attempt to obfuscate their true destination can now be legitimised.
Oh, and I hope that the excess traffic to and from your PC doesn't count towards your bandwidth cap.
Also because all this seems to be to do with DNS, would using OpenDNS stop Phorm?
is that enough to avoid phorm ads?
But as the diagram shows ALL your traffic is intercepted and analyzed. Phorm say that privacy is assured, but do you really trust a company that has a murky past with servers based god knows where and programming done by russians??
But as the diagram shows ALL your traffic is intercepted and analyzed. Phorm say that privacy is assured, but do you really trust a company that has a murky past with servers based god knows where and programming done by russians??
Only the traffic on port 80 (and only http traffic on port 80) is analysed. i believe it should be opt-in because there will be programs that may end up breaking due to this
Quote 'The firm did not, as reported by The Guardian today, promise "to press ahead with its targeted online advertising technology".'
Quote 'The firm did not, as reported by The Guardian today, promise "to press ahead with its targeted online advertising technology".'
Well thats a load of crap as they already limit torrent traffic.
Download a torrent @ 40Kbps and your entire bandwidth is limited to a very slow speed.
as all ISP's on normal phone lines purchase via wholesale from BT, does this mean ISP's that are using the BT network would be subject to phorm as well?
Pic
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/20477/Pictures/phorm.JPG
It could be used to alleviate people's ignorance about what their ISP is doing with their privacy.
It could be used to alleviate people's ignorance about what their ISP is doing with their privacy.
Email the guys at the URL above. Our company uses BT, and we don't get full access to their site, we get a message stating that we are using PHORM.
Petition against this monstrosity
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