Wednesday, March 5th, 2008...4:04 pm
Internet Providers sell your personal data to highest bidder
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Major UK Internet service providers BT, TalkTalk, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media recently signed a deal worth millions with advertising broker Phorm to sell customers browsing history.
UK ISPs BT, TalkTalk, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media have recently admitted that they have agreed a deal to sell their customers browsing history (what you’ve been looking at) to an advertising broker, Phorm. BT will reportedly make $170 million by 2010 out of it. Needless to say, the ISPs didn’t want consumers to find out what they’d done because it is a breach of privacy on their part, right? Wrong! There is absolutely nothing to stop them pulling a stunt like this at all. They have managed to get around privacy laws because they have not released personal details such as your name, email address, date of birth, address and so on.
So what does Phorm do?
Phorm, it seems, is a legitimate company that uses our browser history to tailor advertisements to our own individual wants and needs. Allegedly. The company is ran by a guy called Kent Ertugrul, a serial entrepreneur who has similar failed businesses behind him. A previous business, PeopleOnPage, was branded spyware by global security agency F-Secure.
If that doesn’t sound dodgy enough, the information that the British public are currently being fed makes it sound even worse! According to Phorm themselves it has the following benefits:
- ISP subscribers have a safer, more relevant online experience, with no downside.
- Phorm establishs a higher standard of Internet privacy than currently exists in the industry.
- Phorm only stores advertising categories that match a user’s areas of interest. There is no sensitive data stored.
Forgive me for not leaping around with excitement because of these amazing deals that will supposedly enhance my life when it comes across the pond, which it will no doubt do shortly! In summary…
- The NY Times broke the news. The ISPs hadn’t even got the courtesy to tell their customers about it. Would they have coughed up the information if they hadn’t been exposed?
- In which case…This sounds very much like phishing… Although, maybe I have missed the point?!
- It is a money making scheme, pure and simple, and we (the exploited) don’t get a cent of the revenue!
- The ISPs are only considering an opt out scheme. If they believe that their customers will reject the idea if given a choice then the likelihood is that they will not be given a choice at all.
Food for thought …
3 Comments
March 5th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Hi drs,
I’m from the phorm tech team and would like to clarify a couple of points in your blog. Firstly, the NYT did not break the story. The newswires and online papers in the UK, including FT.com, The Daily Telegraph, bloomberg, reuters, dow jones, all published the story on the day of our announcement (Feb 14) . The New York Times piece followed four days later!
With regard to privacy, we know that we’re raising standards considerably. Audit firm Ernst & Young and 80/20Thinking, the consulting wing of advocates Privacy International both conducted privacy audits and their findings are very favourable. What makes our technology so innovative and groundbreaking is that it gives relevant advertising to consumers without storing any personal information at all. In this sense it dispels the pretty pervasive myth that in order to give relevance you have to store data on searches, browsing history, IP address and so on for months on end. We don’t do that.
We never know who you are and where you’ve browsed and participation is always a choice. You can opt out or in at any time. It’s important to note that if you opt out no data whatsoever is passed from the isp to phorm and as phorm sits in the ISP network no data ever leaves the network. If you’re opted out you’ll still see ads on websites (as you do now) but they won’t be served from the OIX and they won’t be relevant to your browsing.
Do drop us a line if you have any questions. Best wishes,
techteam
March 6th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Kent Ertugrul - Phorm CEO online interview
There’s been quite a lot of interest and discussion following the announcement of the Open Internet Exchange (OIX) and Webwise from Phorm. The company’s CEO, Kent Ertugrul will be available to answer your questions in a live web chat via the Webwise site at http://www.webwise.com/chat on 6 March 2008.
Between 8.30 pm and 9.30 pm tonight, Kent will cover recent announcements from Phorm and give you a chance to ask the founder exactly how Phorm is revolutionising the Internet through more effective anti-fraud technology, more relevant advertising and a new gold standard in privacy. For further information, please visit http://www.webwise.com or http://www.phorm.com.
March 7th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
If is so good, let the customers opt in.
If its so open, publish in detail the specifications for your cookies, the ISP infrastructure elements, the ‘white list’ of applications Phorm will profile, the list of the email/forum sites Phorm claim to exclude, explain how adverts from OIX servers in China are influenced by your profiles.
If its so trustworthy, how is an organisation lead by a CEO associated who openly pushed Adware to be trusted.
I simply have no faith in either Phorm or my ISP (Virgin Media) to respect my privacy wishes (ever).
http://www.badphorm.co.uk
http://www.dephormation.org.uk
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