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Britain - Growing Calls Emerge to Make Phorm Opt-In

By DrewWilson

After being criticized for being illegal by many including FIPR, now there is growing calls by others to make Phorm opt-in instead of opt-out to conform with British privacy laws. ZeroPaid has learned that two entities have joined calls to make technologies like Phorm opt-in instead of opt-out. Phorm is an Internet Service Provider side technology that intercepts users data while surfing the internet and inserting advertisements over top of existing data. Many have criticized the software by breaking privacy laws because, among other things, the technology monitors users behavior through a unique identifying cookie that could be controlled by a person even though Phorm insists that the process is automated and wouldn't in practice be monitored by a person. In a press release earlier this month, the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) says that, "Even if Phorm is not processing personal data, the ISP undertaking the profiling may be to the extent that it uses IP addresses and is able to link its customers to an IP address within its own systems although this may not be its intention.

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on April 30, 2008 (boomark / email).