QuoteISP data deal with former spyware boss triggers privacy fears

More than ten million customers of the UKs three largest ISPs will have their browsing habits sold to a company with roots in the murky world of spyware.

The deal has sparked fears over privacy, but today Phorm, the firm behind the new advertising system, strongly rejected such concerns.

BT, Virgin Media, and Carphone Warehouse have agreed to feed data on their subscribers web activities to Phorm. Data will be fed into the Open Internet Exchange, Phorms advertising network, where advertisers will pay to target interest groups. Frequent visits to the BBCs Top Gear site might result in being served up more car ads, for example.

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

Im currently with Virgin, but will be swapping over very shortly.

LoL my adblock prevents me from going to

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

Nothing wrong with "El Reg"

Indeed, love The Register.

Quote from: White GiantIndeed, love The Register.

Yes it is ok I allowed the site

But really there is more and more bandwidth stealing going on with ads and scripts if using adblock and noScript one can really see how much crap not needed to view a site is stealing your band width to figure out what to target you with in sales and ads it is not for your benefit for sure.

How Phorm plans to tap your internet connection

Exclusive Internal BT documents obtained by The Register for the first time provide solid technical information on how data from millions of BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse customers will be pumped into a new advertising system.

It will not be "injecting" anything into your internet connection, as some commenters on our previous stories have suggested. Phorms Open Internet Exchange (OIX) is an online advertising broker service that, just like DoubleClick, matches advertisers with publishers. For both these parties, the closer the match the better: advertisers reach the people theyre most interested in, who are more likely to click on the ad, which means the publisher will get more money.

DoubleClick does matching using a cookie. Each time you visit a website running DoubleClick code, it can log that youve been there and build up a profile of what ads might be relevant to you. You can of course just kneecap the DoubleClicks system by refusing its cookies in the first place (at that level at least; it does targeting in the old school way too, by serving technology ads on The Register, for example).

Phorm is notably vague on its own website about how its system actually works, preferring to emphasise that the data it collects will be anonymised, and that it also offers anti-phishing warnings.

"With OIX and Webwise, consumers are in control: they can switch relevance off or on at any time at Webwise.com," it reassures. But are they just be switching off ad targeting, or can they stop their data being sent to Phorm?

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

They have already been told that the system has got to be opt in, and people have to be told exactly what it is they are opting in for.

BT did a trial of this last year, without informing its customers. It looks like at least some of them are unhappy enough to be considering suing them for damages. That is apart from the trial breaking the law.

its caused a bit of a mess for there PR/press Team to deal with


Tech dirt
Wired
Boing Boing

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7438578.stm

Call to prosecute BT for their ad trial.