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BT Silences Customers Over Phorm
An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports that BT, the UK's dominant telecom and internet service provider, has 'banned all future discussion of Phorm and its "WebWise" targeted advertising product on its customer forums, and deleted all past threads about the controversy dating back to February.' Phorm is a controversial opt-out system for delivering targeted advertising that intercepts traffic passing through an ISP in order to profile subscribers via an assigned unique ID based on their online activities. Subscribers can opt-out at the Webwise website but are opted-in again if the Phorm cookie is cleared. Firefox users can install Melvin Sage's Firephorm add-on to manage their interaction with Phorm and Webwise."
For years I assumed I needed to pay BT for the line rental so I could get broadband through the telephone line, as I assumed only they could provide it. I got my calls and broadband from companies who give a shit about their customers. Then I found out that there are several companies who can do line rental / call / broadband deals (all of those I checked out were cheaper than BT, and not all signed up for Phorm). When I found this out I was completely away from BT within one month. If you're in the UK, and value privacy and a company who actually wants to please you, I suggest you do some Googling and be prepared to switch. They escaped criminal punishment, government punishment, the only reason they keep doing it is that they assume most people believe they are stuck with BT. If you do switch, make sure you tell them why; who knows, if they see enough rats abandoning ship it may make them rethink the Phorm deal. ispreview.com & adslguide.org should give you a starting point.
It is my understanding that BT won't be removing your ads. Instead, "WebWise" will be a competing advertising provider to the likes of Google, Microsoft, etc. You can elect to put Phorm ads on your site instead, and in theory, those ads will be behaviorally targeted at the people browsing your site. (Or at least, the people who haven't opted out.) If you don't use Phorm, whatever provider's ads you sign up for will be shown.
The shitstorm, as I understand it, isn't that website owners' ads won't be displayed. It's that people using this WebWise thing while browsing your site will be reporting what they're doing to a third party, and since it's opt-in, many (most?) probably won't even know that they're doing it.
Worse, because WebWise now knows that Joe Schmo is interested in whatever it is your web site is advertising, say, cars, then it will start displaying car ads from your competitors on sites that have contracts with Phorm because Joe browsed your site.
All in all, pretty scummy, but I'd genuinely be surprised if it actually removes ads from sites that have nothing to do with it. Especially since they're talking about making it opt-in, I can't imagine that wouldn't be unquestionably illegal.