Phorm Hits Out
As previously reported Phorm are a search marketing company who are planning to launch Webwise, a behavioural targeting service. Webwise, will work through internet service providers (ISPs) and will use deep packet inspection to examine pages in order to analyse who is looking at what. They have received much controversy over the last year and privacy groups have said that Phorm has not complied with privacy legislation in particular after they undertook secret trials last year through ISP BT Broadband. Phorm has been telling the public that all their activities are perfectly compliant but now they are hitting back strongly with a new site: Phorm: Stop Phoul Play.
The new site is combative and unusual, and backlash to bad media press and consumer-led sites such as BadPhorm. It lists its critics in an almost ‘name and shame’ way.
‘Over the last year Phorm has been the subject of a smear campaign orchestrated by a small but dedicated band of online “privacy pirates” who appear very determined to harm our company. Their energetic blogging and letter-writing campaigns, targeted at journalists, MPs, EU officials and regulators, distort the truth and misrepresent Phorm’s technology. We have decided to expose the smears and set out the true story, so that you can judge the facts for yourself.’
One of the issues of contention is more obvious and easy opt-in options for the consumer rather than the current opt-out feature. However, Open Rights Group executive director Jim Killock has since admitted that, even if web sites opt out of the programme, ISPs supporting Phorm will still be able to profile users visiting those sites.
“This is because Phorm can scan search requests entered in those sites, even if it cannot detect the web site pages users are viewing,” Killock said.
“For example, even if Google opts out of Webwise, when a user types in a Google query and they are using BT, it will still go through Phorm before it reaches BT.”
Webwise will gather the url from a search and enough header data to ascertain the content of visited pages.
The issue for consumers is that they don’t want to be spied on. What the consumer wants is security. To know that they are safe. One of the problems lies in the technical aspect of online marketing. It can be harder to explain to the public in a way that will leave them reassured. Phorm’s new site tries to do this and explains that search engine data collection is more invasive to privacy than their system and that their very targeted behavioural marketing techniques is more beneficial to consumers. It could be argued that it could have just defended itself without criticising its opponents and that this would have been a better reputation management technique.
Unfortunately for Phorm business relies on reputation and rightly or wrongly its has been tainted. Organisations , like Amazon and Wikimedia who were lined up to work with Phorm have now retracted. It remains to be seen whether Phorm can regain their reputation. We will be watching to see if the UK government are cleared by the European Commission enquiry concerning their allowing Phorm to trial via BT.
Tags: Behavioural Marketing, reputation marketing, targeted behavioiural marketing