How Phorm plans to tap your internet connection

[Steve Marshall]

If you have your internet connection with BT, Virgin Media or the Carphone Warehouse you might just want to spend a little time reading these links to understand what your ISP is about to do with your connection without telling you.

http://www.phorm.com

http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/webwise.php

For more infomation without the bias that your ISP will put on it then click here and follow some more independent links

http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=phorm

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/25 ... dvertising

After all, who wants targeted advertising ???

[Scott Davis]

Dont worry, you can opt to turn this feature off if you want to.

[Steve Marshall]

Thats the point Scott, you can't opt out as such

You will be opt'ed in by default and it will be up to you to opt out if you don't want targeted advertising but even if you do opt out Phorm will still be collecting information on what sites you visit.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29 ... documents/

The latest info from Carphone Warehouse looks better than whats come out of BT on this subject
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/11 ... s_plummet/

[Scott Davis]

Phorm will still be collecting information on what sites you visit.

Here's some info on what information is collected... I've highlighted in red some points that make it all seem not so bad.

What information is collected?
We use the website address, keywords and search terms from the page viewed to match a category or area of interest (e.g., travel or finance). After matching, this information is discarded permanently, except the category information. The category information is only associated with a unique, randomly-generated cookie that can be deleted at any time from the browser.

Neither the web addresses, nor search terms you use are stored. They are purely matched to an advertising topic and then permanently discarded.
Webwise doesn’t store your internet (IP) address or keep a history of your browsing. The system or advertisers won’t know who you are or the websites you’ve visited.
No personally-identifiable information such as email addresses, surnames, street addresses, or phone numbers are ever stored.
No sensitive or personal financial information, such as credit card numbers, login IDs, passwords or bank account numbers are ever stored.Steps are taken to actively ensure details such as credit card numbers, email addresses etc are never captured.


I dont see opting out of this will be difficult...

Will customers be able to decide whether to use the system?
Customers won’t be forced to use the system, and will have the choice to keep their internet experience exactly as it is now. As we get closer to launch we’ll explain how this will work.


All the above is from the Virgin media website. We'll have to wait and see if this becomes a problem for internet users or not..and I will just be opting out as I dont really want adverts on my screen full stop let alone targeted adverts

[Steve Marshall]

No i think your missing the point here.

The BT desciption of the sytem looked like you could NOT turn it off and you would have your browsing tracked regardless of whether you decided to opt out or not. If you did opt out then they just wouldn't send you the targeted ads but your browsing would still be tracked and go through Phorm's systems. The way they would know that you had opted out would be by placing a cookie on your pc. Now Trend-Micro have said that this is spyware and thats from a big security firm, i dare say we'll hear more about this over the next few weeks.

The Carphone Warehouse have said that they might integrate this system in a different way to BT so that if you did opt out of it then your internet traffic would not touch this tracking system at all. This would be a much better option as none of your pages are then being intercepted. Virgin Media are still yet to plan their setup to be fair and i think they would do well to delay implementing anything on their network until they see how this all plays out with the other ISP's first.

As you say, i don't want any ads myself and when this thing comes along i'll also be opting out. I don't mind a few ads but when a page is covered in adverts its just a mess if you ask me not to mention annoying. As for targeted advertising, no thanks.

[Scott Davis]

The BT desciption of the sytem looked like you could NOT turn it off and you would have your browsing tracked regardless of whether you decided to opt out or not. If you did opt out then they just wouldn't send you the targeted ads but your browsing would still be tracked and go through Phorm's systems.

Yeah that isnt good what BT propose.

Virgin Media are still yet to plan their setup to be fair and i think they would do well to delay implementing anything on their network until they see how this all plays out with the other ISP's first.

Virgin are saying this at the moment...

Customers won’t be forced to use the system, and will have the choice to keep their internet experience exactly as it is now

Staying exactly as it is now to me means it doesnt go through Phorm's systems, so lets hope thats exactly what they do mean

[Steve Marshall]

Virgin are saying this at the moment...

Customers won’t be forced to use the system, and will have the choice to keep their internet experience exactly as it is now

Staying exactly as it is now to me means it doesnt go through Phorm's systems, so lets hope thats exactly what they do mean

Yes i would also hope this but i'm afraid to say that phrase can mean two things, as you say your "connection" will be as it is now and not change in anyway or the word "experience" tells me there that your connection might change or the way its routed, just you won't notice anything at your end hence the use of the word "experience".

Infact just going back and re reading what i wrote there, what they say is, you can turn this system off if you want to and not receieve any targeted adverts and can carry on as you are now. They also don't tell you that you will not be opt'ed in by default do they but lets not debate what they say too much at the moment as their system isn't setup as yet anyway but all i'll say is its all in the wording, but isn't that the same with most things today?

I do hope they give people the option to opt in to this system and don't opt people in by default as this is where the problems start. If people are opt'ed into this system then they need to be told that they are being so. You know as well as i do, VirginMedia will not send you a letter to tell you as they would have to send 3 million or so, they can't really send you an email either to notify you as a lot of their subscribers don't use their email service and opt for a gmail, hotmail or yahoo type account so how can your ISP tell you? I would keep your eye on your bill as they might drop something in there to tell you that the term & conditions are changing. This is another point anyway but lets leave that for now.

Back to my original points you can see from BT's setup that you can't opt out as such can you from this system, as you say big brother is watching you