Slashdot Mirror
Amazon To Block Phorm Scans
clickclickdrone writes "The BBC are reporting that Amazon has said it will not allow online advertising system Phorm to scan its web pages to produce targeted ads. For most people this is a welcome step, especially after the European Commission said it was starting legal action against the UK earlier this week over its data protection laws in relation to Phorm's technology. Anyone who values their privacy should applaud this move by Amazon."
It doesn't say anywhere how you opt your own website out of this.
I suggest everyone does this, no-matter how small or insignificant your site it.
Anyone who values their privacy should applaud this move by Amazon.
Thank you for telling me how to think. I believe we are approaching this from the wrong end (why start with websites?).
The article hints at two other points I would encourage Brits who care to be vocal about:
Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, said: We expect more sites to block Webwise in the near future and also ISPs to drop plans to snoop on web users.
Write your ISPs. Threaten to change ISPs even if you're not able to. Let them know how this makes you feel.
The European Commission has described the technology as an "interception" of user data and wants UK law to reflect more explicitly the need for consent from users in order for the service to be implemented.
As always, contact your parliamentary representative and also EU representative and let them know how you feel about this.
These would be much more effective options than asking each website that exists to request Phorm not scan their site.
My work here is dung.
I suspect we'll see a fair bit more of this. Not because the world is full of fuzzy defenders of privacy(it isn't); but because the world is full of nonfuzzy violators of privacy and Phorm is trying to muscle in on their action.
One of Amazon's major selling points, beyond their good logistics, is their ability to use site analytics to make interest based recommendations to customers. Obviously, they have zero interest in letting Phorm piggyback on that, on their own site no less.
I suspect that many other major web presences will be in a similar place. Phorm is potentially lucrative for the ISPs, but it is a nontrivial threat to larger site and ad-network operators. The small guys are more or less resigned to outsourcing analytics and ad placement, so it won't be as much of a change for them; but the big independents will not be pleased.
Except with Google ads, the people who actually own the website choose whether or not to serve them. Phorm ads are injected at the ISP level, completely ignoring whether the server wants the ads or not. Yes, they're still interest based, but they're evil for other reasons in my opinion.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Phorm are liars when it comes to robots.txt.
They say they respect robots.txt but their scraper will only respect it if it also blocks google and yahoo. If it allows Google and Yahoo, they say it's fair game for Phorm. That's not respecting it at all.
But what do you expect from the sort of people who would conduct illegal surveillance on people to test their spyware system and claim that letting opt opt out would have been impossible because it would have been too difficult for them to understand the complicated computery stuff they were doing.
Phraudsters.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Is that if you opt-out of Phorm, you are automatically entered, for free, in a program called Phorm2. But don't worry, you can opt out. For your convenience, in that case, you will automatically be entered in our new business web marketing program, Phorm++. If you're not interested in Phorm++, no worries, you can very easily opt-out. In fact, it's so easy, we'll do you a favour and give you free, automatic access to PhormDeluxe. PhormDeluxe is completely optional. Just send us a certified letter to opt out.