There’s been a lot of fuss recently, even in the mainstream media, about Phorm and its Webwise service. The system is implemented by ISPs and replaces adverts in web pages with different ones “targeted” to your browsing habits. This is done by keeping a list of the websites you visit, and using the contents of those sites to determine what things you like and don’t like. It’s led a short but exciting life: initial trials by BT which were undertaken without the consent or knowledge of users have been suggested to be illegal by various different parties and are now being investigated by the CPS. The Information Commissioner’s Office have stated that the service should be opt-in, not opt-out, and after not receiving a timely response from the government about whether the service breaches privacy laws, the EU are now suing the UK over the issue. Over 21,000 people signed a number10.gov.uk petition [no longer available] asking the government to ban it’s use. Big names such as the Wikimåedia Foundation (the people who run Wikipedia amongst other things) and Amazon have opted out, and the Open Rights Group has written to others like Yahoo, eBay and Microsoft, urging them to do the same. Even the Privacy Officer of Facebook, who haven’t got the greatest record on privacy, have suggested customers contact their ISPs about phorm. Phorm have admitted editing their Wikipedia entry to take out some critiscisms, and some anti-adware and anti-virus firms have reported that they will detect Phorm as adware or spyware. There’s a good run-down of events over the past year on the BBC.

According to the Phorm site Webwise is currently being used or assessed for use by BT, TalkTalk and Virgin Media. Phorm state that the process is anonymous. They provide an option on the Webwise site to turn the service off on a connection-by-connection basis, and have recently stated that if you turn off the service then none of your traffic will go through their servers (previously it still went through, they just promised not to do anything with it). The service does not insert ads into pages at random, it only replaces ads which are already there.

So why should you care?

As an ISP Customer
While you may not care whether anyone monitors your browsing, you should at least be aware that it’s happening, and you should know what’s happening with the data. There will always be the argument that those with nothing to hide should have nothing to fear, but your data is your property. People and companies shouldn’t be able to do with it what they want, whenever and however they want, and without informing you. It’s explained in more eloquent terms than I can manage at badphorm.co.uk.

To see if your ISP is currently using Webwise, visit this page on the Webwise site and click the ‘You Can Choose’ link on the left-hand side. You can opt out of the service from this area too, apparently.

As a Webmaster
Running a website, I want to be in control of what visitors see on my page. Even if I run ads (which I don’t), I want to target those to specific areas and products or services. Phorm / Webwise takes that control away from me, and means that my site is serving up things over which I have no control. I also don’t like the idea of all traffic for a sizeable portion of my audience being routed through the Phorm servers – I don’t know what they are doing to link that information with data about the individual users and their browsing habits. I have nothing to hide, I just think it’s silly to assume that you can just analyse the traffic of thousands of people and websites for your own business gain, without informing them or making the process entirely transparent.

Anyway, to opt out of the service, check out the instructions here [edit: link no longer live]. It basically entails sending an email with details of the request (i.e. the domains) to website-exclusion@webwise.com. You’ll then receive an email from Phorm confirming that the domains will be excluded within 48 hours. Although this link comes from the BT Webwise site, my understanding is that the exclusion should apply across the entire Webwise system regardless of the ISP your visitors are using.