Phorm

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I have been following the stories on Phorm for the last few months and wonders when something like this will hit SA.

For those of you who do not know Phorm - it is BT in the UK's "behavioural advertising" systems that provide targeted advertising by snooping on Internet users' web browsing" and holds serious implications for Big Brother Watching.

Phorm, formerly known as 121Media, is a digital technology company based in London, New York, and Moscow. The company drew attention when it announced it was in talks with several United Kingdom ISPs to deliver targeted advertising based on user browsing habits by using deep packet inspection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorm

How does it work?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phorm ... iagram.png


more interesting reading...
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/080518-phorm.pdf

So your data is being pimped..

Sept 2008: UK Government rules that Phorm's legal, but requires consent.

http://www.filesaveas.com/phorm.html
http://www.fipr.org/press/081125phorm.html

European Commission's decision to start legal action against the U.K. government over Phorm : Phorm's platform violates E.U. rules in some cases as the U.K. hasn't required operators to gain consent of users before gathering their personal data.
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-200 ... 09462.html

Companies like Amazon and Wiki are opting out - but what will it mean in the end for users and their privacy?

And what sayeth Phrom?

With Webwise, ISPs can offer a new security feature designed to dynamically warn customers if they visit a fraudulent "phishing" site. When a user clicks on a link for a known phishing site, Webwise will detect it and automatically show the user a strong warning notice within their internet browser before they reach the fraudulent site.

To determine if a website is a known fraudulent source or not, Phorm technology checks the address of the site the user is trying to visit against key industry blacklists of known fraudulent websites from professional anti-fraud security firms. (This does not slow the connection or otherwise harm browsing.)

Webwise can help to reduce the numbers of consumers online who are hurt by these attacks. We think that's being web wise.

http://webwise.phorm.com/