Phorm?

[kakariko81280]

I heard about a company called Phorm recently. They are another advertising company but the reason they are making headlines is because of the deals they are making with the ISPs here in the UK.

It seems that they want to wire themselves into your ISP in what appears to be a man-in-the-middle attack with the ISP's blessing so they can track what you are doing in order to sell adverts.

They aren't just checking the sites you visit, but are analysing the raw traffic for keywords and search terms. In a suitably paranoid fashion I'm sure they will be looking for whatever they deem interesting on a given day.

The details are 'anonymously' stored against a unique identifier. We all saw how that worked out with the AOL search data release.

Those of you here with BT as your ISP may want to find out if you are already part of the 10,000 customer trial. Everyone else who is as entirely freaked out as I am might want to have a (polite) word with your ISP. I fully intend on cancelling everything I have with my ISP if they go through with this.

I haven't checked where else this is going on, but even those of you not in the UK would be wise to look into this.

Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » Bad Phorm on Privacy
Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » Phorm’s Harms Extend Beyond Privacy

What do you guys think?

Chris...

[daark.child]

I personally don't like the idea because it seems like an invasion of privacy. So far most ISPs are implementing it as an opt in because I am sure if they tried to force it on everyone, then they could lose customers.

[phormwatch]

Hi. I've just cancelled by BT Broadband account over this.

Phorm spyware really is some nasty stuff. I'm afraid you're wrong, though: two out of three of the big ISPs trying to implement this technology have so far said that it will be 'opt-out', rather than 'opt-in'. (Talk Talk is the only one to have 'opt-in').

To make matters worse, the 'opt-out' isn't really an opt-out, since the only thing it does is prevent targeted ads being served to you. It doesn't stop your data being intercepted.

The FIPR and Richard Clayton (security researcher from Oxford) have stated quite clearly that they strongly believe this technology violates the RIP Act and is therefore illegal under UK law.

The only way to stop this is to put pressure on the government to stop this illegal operation and to show ISPs how many customers they're going to lose if they continue with this crazy scheme.

You can sign the 10 Downing Street Petition here:

Petition to: Stop ISP's from breaching customers privacy via advertising technologies.

Many people have chosen to write to their ISPs and tell them exactly what they think about this. If you feel strongly, I urge you to write to them as well and tell them that you intend to switch if they carry on like this.

best regards,

- phormwatch

[jayd512]

Not only is it an 'opt-out', but it's only a temporary fix most of the time. The opt-out usually involves accepting a cookie from the ISP, meaning that the next time you clear your Browser cache (which for me is every time I close Firefox), you'll have to go through the same deal again.

[elija]

I have just signed the petition on the Number 10 web site. I wonder
if I will get a patronising email explaining that I am wrong. Just like
I did last time I signed a petition (against road pricing that time).

I will be contacting my ISP (Demon) to find out if they plan to
introduce this on their network.

[Freston]

Is this some nightmarish scenario from 1984 or what?? *shudders*