http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7280791.stm
Ad system 'will protect privacy'
By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website
Privacy campaigners have praised the user protection measures of a
controversial online advertising system about to be deployed in the UK.
The tools, developed by US firm Phorm, track users' online surfing habits.
BT, Virgin and Talk Talk have signed up to trial the technology.
Simon Davies, who is also director of Privacy International, said: "We were
impressed with the effort that had been put into minimising the collection of
personal information."
Mr Davies and Gus Hosein were invited by Phorm to assess its privacy protection
measures.
The two work with campaign group Privacy International but their work for Phorm
was done as part of a new privacy start-up, 80/20 Thinking Ltd.
Phorm has said its tools anonymise the data it collects and that users can opt
out via their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) at any stage.
Mr Davies told BBC News: "Phorm does advance the whole sector of protecting
personal information by two to three steps.
"The problem is that may not be good enough for consumers."
He added: "Behavioural advertising is a rather spooky concept for many people."
Randomised number
Phorm works by placing a cookie on a user's machine that contains a randomised
identifying number. That cookie tracks websites visited and draws conclusions
about a user's behaviour in order to target more relevant adverts.
The ISPs and companies who sign up to the scheme take a cut of advertising
revenue.
Phorm has said the data collected is 100% anonymous and no profile of the user
is ever created, so that no-one could "reverse engineer" the information in
order to establish identity.
The company's website also states that the IP address of a computer, the unique
identifying number of a machine online, is not stored, nor are search engine
queries.
But the firm does "collect" search terms used, as well as keywords on web
pages, which has concerned some web users.
'Informed consent'
On its website, Phorm's chief executive Kent Ertugrul, said Phorm ignored form
fields on websites, numbers with more than three digits, e-mail addresses and
secure web pages.
Mr Davies said the onus would be on Internet Service Providers to ensure
customers had enough information about the scheme in order to have "informed
consent".
He said unless ISPs were extremely clear they could run foul of the Regulation
of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).
"RIPA is pretty clear that the provision for notification for consent, and
informed consent, have to be extremely clear," he said.
A spokesman for BT said it was confident that Phorm met all applicable
regulations and laws.
'Consumer benefits'
Later this month, 10,000 BT customers will be invited to take part in a trial
of Phorm.
The BT spokesman said Phorm offered consumers two benefits.
"Customers will receive more relevant advertising and will get warnings if any
of the websites they visits are known to be phishing sites."
He said research BT had carried out had shown that customers did want more
relevant advertising as a result of their surfing habits being tracked online.
"We have gone to considerable lengths to ensure our customers privacy is
guaranteed," he added.
Mr Davies said Privacy International remained opposed to services which
required users to opt out.
He said: "If firms say this "enhances the user experience", if that is true and
users want it, then make it opt in.
"That will also avoid all sorts of legal problems."
The spokesman for BT said the firm had made no decision about whether a wider
deployment of Phorm would be opt in or opt out.
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