Phorm

asininity

Hi guys,

If you dont know what Phorm is heres a wee explanation from badphorm.

Simply put, three of the UK's largest ISPs (Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk) have decided to sell your private browsing history to an advertising broker. Yes, the entire content of every web page you visit gets sent to Phorm in real time, as you click. A personal profile is created, allowing Phorm to send you 'targeted advertising'.

I'm sure a few of you know about dephormation for firefox, and safari apparently blocks phorm as standard. Any other suggestions as to what can be done to protect ourselves from phorms snooping apart from moving isps.

peter_the_piper

As far as I remember Phorm and its customers, except the UK government that is, are supposed to give you an Opt-in so you should be safe. Hopefully the EU will have something to say as well. This is a very intrusive and dangerous piece of software/equipment.

asininity

I think BT is an opt out but even then your data goes through phorm. EU is taking britain to court I think, hopefully they sue us good!

peter_the_piper

I'm glad I'm with Newnet who have stated catergorically they will not be using/installing Phorm, unless its under the guise of our wonderful leaders fight against everything.

dealer_wins

If Phorm comes to your ISP then its time to get a MAC code and move to one that respects and protects your privacy. There are plenty of good ISPs that have stated they will never use Phorm or similar!!

Joe_Bloggs

It would be useful if all the ISPs would say whether they are pro PHORM or anti PHORM.
I do not want my browsing experience interrupted by adverts however they are tailored. If it is an advert then I do not wish to see it. I use Firefox with Adblock Plus, Flashblock and NoScript.
J_B.

DatabaseError

asininity wrote: »

I'm sure a few of you know about dephormation for firefox, and safari apparently blocks phorm as standard.

You are sadly mistaken! The only block against phorm is to change ISP to one that doesn't use the system. Even with dephormation or similar techniques, the data is still passing through phorm't equipment.

Jaffa.

You can use K9 web protection and use that to block adverts - it even blocks the ones in msn

I say make their efforts futile!

bonzer

If it helps, I asked if we could opt out MSE a few days ago. Martin kindly said he'd look into it:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1634575

Marty_J

According to BT's help pages, Webwise (i.e Phorm) does not support Safari:

http://www2.bt.com/static/i/btretail/webwise/help.html#can-i-use-any-web-browser

Here's an article from last year explaining why:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2008/apr/08/cambridgeexpertusesafarito

Targeted advertising isn't really anything new. If you use Gmail, Google read your emails in order to serve you targeted text advertising. It's a bit much for it to happen to all your web traffic though.

asininity

Targeted advertising is mostly easily blockable, phorm sits between you and the site you're visiting and scans everything. I dont use google for that reason.

I think we should let third parties record all our phones calls and read all our mail so they can send us targeted junk mail!