Phorm is a behavioural advertising tool that can be used to analyse a customer's web surfing habits to enable targeted advertising. The use of Phorm has resulted in a number of concerns being raised within the technology sector over individual privacy and data protection. The Open Rights Group being particularly vocal.
The EU have, on 14 April, launched legal proceedings against the UK over problems with the UK's implementation of EU ePrivacy and personal data protection rules. They have concluded that there are "problems in the way the UK has implemented parts of EU rules on the confidentiality of communications" and have asked the UK to respond to their questions in this first stage of the proceedings within 2 months of 14 April 2009. The full press release can be found on the Europa website.
The Open Rights Group wrote to to the biggest users of the Internet (namely Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!) asking them to opt-out of the use of Phom technology. Webwise, the name Phorm is being marketed under, does enable ISPs to opt-out of its monitoring services, however, due to the way the system works the contents of all websites visited will still be mirrored to the Phorm system but not analysed.
Both Amazon and Wikipedia have chosen to opt-out of Webwise. Amazon stated simply that "We have contacted Webwise requesting that we opt-out for all our domains". Wikipedia's statement was slightly more enlightening. Wikipedia stated "After some internal discussion on whether opting out of the Phorm user-profiling system in the UK would legitimize it, we're going ahead and requesting an opt-out for all the domains under the Wikimedia Foundation's control".
Maybe Phorm will not prove as controversial as first thought if other major users of the Internet (and then maybe all of them) opt-out. We wait for further developments.
