Proposed Advertisement Service
Phorm had worked with major US and British ISPs—including BT Group (formerly British Telecom), Virgin Media, and TalkTalk (at the time owned by The Carphone Warehouse)—on a behavioral targeting advertisement service to monitor browsing habits and serve relevant advertisements to the end user. Phorm say these deals would have given them access to the surfing habits of 70% of British households with broadband. The service, which uses deep packet inspection to check the content of requested web pages, has been compared to those of NebuAd and Front Porch.
The service, which would have been marketed to end-users as "Webwise", (in 2009 the ((BBC)) took legal advice over the trade mark Webwise), would work by categorising user interests and matching them with advertisers who wish to target that type of user. "As you browse we're able to categorise all of your Internet actions", said Phorm COO Virasb Vahidi. "We actually can see the entire Internet."
The problem for newspapers is that a story headlined 'Two Dead in Baghdad' isn't very product-friendly, ... ut if you know who is looking at the page, that's where the opportunity is.
Kent Ertugrul, CEO of PhormThe company says that data collected would be completely anonymous and that Phorm will never be aware of the identity of the user or what they have browsed, and adds that Phorm's advertising categories exclude certain sensitive terms and have been widely drawn so as not to reveal the identity of the user. By monitoring users' browsing, Phorm even says they are able to offer some protection against online fraud and phishing.
Phorm formerly maintained an opt out policy for its services. However, according to a spokesman for Phorm, the way the opt-out works means the contents of the websites visited will still be mirrored to its system. All computers, all users, and all http applications used by each user of each computer will need to be configured (or supplemented with add ons) to opt out. It has since been declared by the Information Commissioner's Office that Phorm would only be legal under UK law if it were an opt-in service.
Read more about this topic: Phorm
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