Customers of BT Broadband will be invited to take part in further trials of the controversial Phorm advertising platform, the two companies have announced.
After admitting to running previous trials of the technology without the knowlegde of customers, Phorm today said that new trials were about to get underway.
“Phorm, the advertising technology company, today announces that its ISP partner, BT, will tomorrow commence its trial of Phorm’s platform, branded ‘BT Webwise’,” the company said in a statement.
“BT customers are being invited to take part in the trial, which will take place over a number of weeks. Following successful completion of this trial and an appropriate period of analysis and planning, it is currently expected that Phorm’s platform will be rolled out across BT’s network,” the statement continued.
The City of London Police last week announced that it had closed an investigation into the secret trials.
Anti-Phorm campaigner Alexander Hanff was incensed and is currently polling visitors to his website to see if they would be willing to help him fund a Judicial Review of the decision to can the investigation.
However, the controversy surrounds Phorm’s use of a technology known as Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) which reveals which web pages a surfer has been looking at.
Hanff claims that if Phorm is given the go-ahead, many other similar systems could be implemented and that unscrupulous individuals could use the information for criminal ends.
He told Web User in August that if Phorm is permitted to sidestep the law “we will soon be flooded with similar companies and technologies and people’s personal data will be compromised”.
Phorm has long maintained that its technology is not invasive and should help advertisers provide relevant advertising and stop surfers seeing ads for products they aren’t interested in.
No Comment Received
Leave A Reply