Privacy group asks web's biggest names to reject Phorm system

The Open Rights Group (ORG), a UK group that aims to protect people's rights online, has written to Google, Microsoft, eBay, Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo! and AOL to ask them to opt out of Phorm's system.

Phorm's technology tracks people's web surfing by using traffic information provided by internet service providers (ISPs) to help advertisers to target ads to people they think will be interested in them.

The system looks at an ISP's traffic, which has proved controversial. Privacy advocates have objected to trials of the technology they say were conducted without users' permission and say that the system does not inform users clearly enough of what it involves.

The system has been called Webwise and is due to be launched by BT. Virgin and Talk Talk are also said to be considering launching the service.

ORG and other activists say that the system is only fair if users should actively choose, or opt in to, it.

ORG has now written to the owners of the web's most popular sites pointing out that they can prevent the system looking at their sites and asking them to do just that.

"You may already be aware of the very significant concerns being expressed by many of your UK internet customers about the interception and processing of their data whenever it is viewed by customers whose ISPs deploy the Phorm/Webwise system," said ORG's letter to the companies.

"[Users] may be using other internet providers, but the information they put on your website may well be viewed by them as personal, and they will not wish it to be read and stored by third party technologies," it said.

ORG pointed out that Phorm allows the publishers of web sites to demand that their sites not be scanned or their visitors' behaviour tracked.

"While we recognise that an 'opt-out' is an entirely second-rate way of dealing with this problem, we would strongly urge you to take advantage of it, in order to immediately reduce the risk of harm to your company and to your customers," said the letter.

"Making your decision public will provide reassurance to your customers, and will help them retain confidence in your brand, as well as in the integrity of the Internet as a whole," it said.

BT's information page about Webwise says that website owners can protect sensitive information behind passwords or can use robots.txt files to repel scans of the pages.
Site owners are unlikely to want to use robot files, though, because they will repel all automatic scanning, including that of web search engines. The search engine scans are welcome because they bring traffic to sites.

BT's Webwise page does offer another option, though. "You may request specifically that your website is not scanned by Webwise," it said, giving an email address to which such requests should be sent.

Online advertising trade body the Interactive Advertising Bureau published guidelines earlier this year to how companies should implement behavioural advertising. The guidelines were criticised by ORG as not offering users' privacy enough protection.