BT Trials Phorm After Six-Month Delay
September 30, 2008 | by Christopher Nickson
Originally planned to begin in April, British Telecom is starting its third trial of the contentious ad-serving Phorm technology
It was supposed to begin in April, but was put on hold, supposedly for technical reasons. It’s drawn a massive fallout of criticism and it’s being investigated by the European Commission. But now British Telecom (BT) is going ahead with its third trial of the Phorm ad-serving technology, known as Webwise.
Those taking Phorm will get a unique identifier that tracks their browsing habits online and targets ads to them, according to ZDNet.
According to BT:
"Around 10,000 customers will be invited to opt in to the trial when they commence their browsing session. We will issue invitations at random."
This time BT is obtaining consent, which they didn’t during the trials in 2006 and 2007 – and that was the big concern among privacy advocates. Some of those concerns do remain, but Kent Ertugrul, Phorm’s chief executive, feels they will be addressed. He noted:
"There is a pattern that people become more confident through engagement with the technology, including the [Commission]. We're confident that people will not only tolerate it but welcome [Phorm] as a big step forward. The fact is [that Phorm] is something that is being welcomed by all of the websites we've spoken with and with advertisers. Market research by ISPs suggests [Phorm] is welcomed by consumers."
Post Your Comment...Comments
Jane Hammond on Sep 30th, 2008 at 1:42 PM:
What rubbish, no consumer wants all their browsing habits being tracked by a spyware company.
Phorm offer NOTHING to the consumer, the anti-phishing is a trojan horse.
Mike Calder on Oct 1st, 2008 at 9:34 AM:
The BT Help page for "Webwise" says:
"Is my data still viewed when I am not participating?
No. When you choose not to take the service, or switch BT Webwise off, it's off. Those who have opted out will not have their browsing information profiled. No information is gathered, and therefore no information is stored. Customers who opt out will not come into contact with any Phorm-managed equipment."
Given the statement by a BT spokesdroid quoted by the BBC: "The web browsing traffic of those that "opt out" will pass through the Webwise system but will not be profiled or copied by it, he added. ", one gathers that BT is being, shall we say, economical with the truth.
James Smudge on Oct 26th, 2008 at 7:10 PM:
Despite BT and Phorm's claims, they have not produced one shred of evidence that BT Webwise/Phorm is welcomed by customers or websites. Come on Kent and BT produce the evidence or shut up.
NoddyPI on Oct 27th, 2008 at 1:31 AM:
Hmmm, massive fallout and yet this article has garnered only 3 responses in a month.
Someone's being economical with the truth, don't think it's BT though.
Cue the usual suspects.......
Jonah on Oct 27th, 2008 at 1:51 AM:
Hello NoddyPI I see you've been trawling the Web Again & denigrating those who have Real Concerns about the "Methods Used by this Technology?".
Look at the Petition Website if you like, not everyone concerned has time to reply to your obfuscations of the facts or follow the story though.
As someone who has viewed those pages in 2006 & 2007 & seen other events produced by these Profiler Systems (2008), I can assure others that the Software inside these DPI Boxes is basically "SPYWARE"
Pete on Oct 27th, 2008 at 2:34 AM:
Phorm is an audacious scam to conduct mass industrial espionage against UK ecommerce businesses and web sites, to strip firms of their customers and visitors.
Phorm steal the content of web sites without the knowledge or consent of the creator. Then use the marketing intelligence to promote competitor sites.
Never mind the bogus assertions that you can opt out... its supposed to be an opt in for consumers.
To be legal, it should be opt in for web sites too. Good luck with that business plan.
There is no was this should be tolerated in the UK, or any other democratic country. None at all.
RevRob on Oct 27th, 2008 at 4:10 AM:
So BT are obtaining consent are they? Not according to my information. The way in which they are "inviting" customers to participate in Webwise is by hijacking their browser during a surfing session, no matter what web page they are trying to view, intercepting that browser request, delaying it, and instead sticking a Webwise invitation in front of the customer. This is without consent. The invitation page does not properly represent the Webwise product and is designed to encourage a Yes click with a big luminous green button to opt In (although the customer has already been opted in to having their data intercepted and profiled whatever they do in response to the page) and a tiny text link to refuse.
Secondly - a conundrum I haven't yet got an answer to. When pitching their product to advertisers, Phorm can claim "we can see the whole internet" and claim to target adverts based on what pages you have visited, with what frequency, and how recently, and what actual products you have been browsing - for example a particular model of a Canon camera, 3 days ago, as explained here: "An advertiser can be very specific about what will be displayed at a site like FT.com. For instance, Canon could instruct Phorm to deliver adverts for its latest digital camera to anyone who visited a web page identified by Canon as giving a glowing review the previous week. It can narrow that request even further: Canon can tell Phorm only to deliver the ad to anyone who read that review and also visited more than two other pages that mentioned the model name, e.g. IXUS 970, within the past three days.
I put this hypothetical to Phorm. It stressed that Canon would have to provide at least 10 URLs in its targeting instructions, not just one review page. This, said Phorm, is part of its privacy protection; though it seems to me that there is nothing to stop Canon providing nine URLs that it knows nobody will ever visit."
(Quoted from http://www.out-law.com/page-9090 )
Yet in the same breath they aim this comment at those concerned about privacy, that they do not store urls. It just doesn't stack up does it?
Two senior VP's of Phorm have departed from the company this month as the share price has plummetted, today approaching the £1 floor. They have given up potentially lucrative share options - if they had confidence that the company was going to succeed, one wonders why they have abandoned such potentially profitable share options. No doubt the markets and the EU Commission and the CPS and BT customers will make their feelings known. Meanwhile - anyone seen a BT Webwise triallist anywhere? There are supposed to be 10,000 out there yet not one of them has surfaced on the dedicated BT Beta forum about the trial.
Of course it could be because they don't want their email address leaked. BT Retail Beta forums recently leaked a huge number of customer email addresses on to the internet, giving rise to serious concerns that if they can't protect their forum users, maybe their implementation of Webwise might just be as flakey as their running of their forums.
Adelle on Oct 27th, 2008 at 5:46 AM:
[Quote]
"The fact is [that Phorm] is something that is being welcomed by all of the websites we've spoken with"
Utter twoddle! Kent may have spoken to a few websites himself, but is obviously taking no notice whatsoever of the webmasters opinions over this direct breach of copyright!
This system copies the viewed web pages, without permission on the ISPs network, then passes the profiled information over to Phorm's servers to be used for financial gain. There is no consent from the webmasters whatsoever, and is in breach of copyright. I have not given permission for my websites and web apps to be profiled, yet even if I submit my websites so they are not used, THEY ARE STILL COPIED!
Its wrong, very very wrong.
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Jane Hammond on Sep 30th, 2008 at 1:42 PM:
What rubbish, no consumer wants all their browsing habits being tracked by a spyware company.
Phorm offer NOTHING to the consumer, the anti-phishing is a trojan horse.