BT must die!
2nd April 2008 by David North
Not content at being a hugely ineffective, unaccountable, inefficient behemoth BT have now decided to break the law by monitoring 30,000 users without permission for a trial of the potential Phorm system! An alternative opinion on Phorm is here.
Personally I don’t have a massive problem with the idea behind the system if it means I get targeted adverts that I might actually be interested in. However there are still major questions about privacy and surely this should be an opt in system not just be rolled out for every user?
As for trialling without people’s permission - which planet are these people on? Hang em all!
Yes, I saw this on the news this morning and the apparent solution to rectifying this breach of trust from BT is to either disable cookies or clear them after every session. Totally useless and then means that all the sites that I do need to keep cookies for and are providing a comprehensive service such as Amazon are then dumbed down. Well done BT.
Hi,
I work for Phorm’s comms team
I should make clear that Webwise will allow you to opt out easily.
The first thing you see will be a window giving a choice about whether you participate once the system is deployed, and you will be reminded as you browse that Webwise is on via the ad slots inside the websites that you browse. By clicking on any of the ads you can also choose to opt out.
And when you opt out — or switch the system off — it’s off. No browsing data whatsoever is passed from the ISP to Phorm.
If you regularly clear your cookies, which will clear the “opt-out cookie”, you can permanently opt out by blocking cookies from the domain, http://www.webwise.com.
If you’re interested, there’s more information about Webwise here: http://webwise.com/how-it-works/faq.html
Phorm Comms Team
Thanks for entering the dicussion.
The issue still stands that Phorm is an opt out system therefore meaning everybody is opted in to start with. This is where I take exception - a lot of people aren’t savvy enough to even know what Phorm is so won’t opt out. But of course that’s the reason for taking this stance isn’t it - so you get more participants?
As I’ve said I’m not against this type of system just that it should be opt in to start with. I understand it will take longer to build up a user-base but it would be so much more ethical (or even legal).
Why should I have to go through opting out just because a few companies get a bit greedy and can’t wait for users to opt in?