True to Phorm

Phorm has been in the news again twice recently, and neither case gives much reason for its supporters to celebrate.

For those who are unaware of Phorm, previously 121Media, a nice roundup of developments can be found at The Register. Basically, for those who don’t wish to leave our delightful site, Phorm is a firm who intends to provide targeted advertising to web users. Dealing directly with ISPs, Phorm uses keywords on the pages viewed by web users to determine which ads to serve in future.

This has proved quietly controversial; some are concerned by the prospect of basically having their browsing habits monitored and are not reassured by assertions that their data is associated only with an anonymised number. Detractors point to the fact that a previous venture by founder Kent Ertugrul had a very similar goal but ended up being classified as spyware (in the interests of balance here is an interview with key Phorm staff explaining how they see their product / service.

Counter arguments, (including the less convincing one that people with nothing to hide shouldn’t object) were undermined somewhat when it emerged that BT had run tests without the prior consent of the target – its own broadband users. After several investigation, no subsequent legal action seems to have been taken.

However, this week (yay – the point!), plans for the European Commission to sue the UK government were made public. As a reason, they cited the failure of the UK government to take any action against BT and Phorm for these trials. In a sense, this is somewhat regrettable – any fine imposed on the government will likely be paid for by tax payers. That said, I (remember, my opinions are in no way indicative of those of Bluhalo) am in total agreement with anything that condems such trials where prior consent has not been obtained.

Everyone is always looking for better ways to monetise the web, and success there should result in a richer experience for users (more money = more investment = more wooshy things), which is obviously good. That said, in achieving this it is important that the trust in providers (ISPs, and of the sites themselves) is not undermined. We are repeatedly shown how easily data is lost for example here, here, here and here, to list a random few that come back in a quick search).

While I am not in any way commenting on the ability of Phorm to protect their data, I do believe that our personal data and by extension our online privacy should definitely be respected on a medium which arguably offers unparalleled speed of deployment of information. To this end, I believe it is equally important that we have confidence that this will indeed be the case – such high profile issues are bad.

When confidence is lost or damaged people have a tendency to abandon the idea or product, whether rightly or wrongly. Which brings us to the second story I mentioned - the Open Rights Group have contacted a number of websites, asking them to opt out of Phorm. The story in question details the first respondent, Amazon, who has requested to opt out for all of their domains.

Such a high profile opt-out can only be bad, however Phorm are still committed to launching. No secret has been made of the fact that there is potentially a lot of money to be made – a reliable and clear opt-out (or preferably opt-IN?) for users could only help them achieve this. Whether they have learned from the mistakes of the past and will be able to overcome any effects of the bad publicity remains to be seen.