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Customer browsing habits to be used for targeted advertising
(26-2-08) - Customers of the UK’s three biggest ISPs will have their browsing habits sold to a targeted advertising company in exchange for a cut of the profits, it has emerged today.
BT (www.BT.com), Virgin Media (www.VirginMedia.com) and Carphone Warehouse - which owns AOL (www.AOL.co.uk) and TalkTalk (www.TalkTalk.co.uk) - which collectively have more than 10 million broadband customers, will sell users’ internet habits to Phorm, the company behind the new advertising system.
The system tracks the sites that you visit most and then offers personalised advertisements based on the type of sites you spend the most time on. For example, if you spend a lot of time looking at cinema listings, you might be targeted with ads selling or renting DVDs.
However, The Register discovered that the company has its roots in Spyware software, sparking security concerns. Kent Ertegrul runs the company and was founder of PeopleOnPage, an online advertising company that was blacklisted as Spyware by internet security firms Symantec and F-Secure.
Phorm rejected the concerns, saying that the new model has resolved past problems.
A spokesman for Phorm told The Register that with new, built-in security measures - such as anti-phishing technology, “we’re actually setting a whole new gold standard in online privacy”.
A statement from BT said: “BT has carried out extensive commercial, legal and technical due diligence on Phorm and Webwise, and is confident that customer confidentiality and security is wholly protected. Webwise doesn't collect any personal information, or keep IP address, website addresses, keywords or search terms - it simply analyses web pages visited by BT customers and matches them against pre-defined categories of interest to advertisers.
“Detailed customer research by BT has shown that once customers are aware of the benefits of Webwise, they are overwhelmingly in favour of the free security features and more relevant advertising during web browsing. All BT customers will be able to switch Webwise on or off as they see fit.”
Michael Phillips, BroadbandChoices.co.uk product director, said: “Concerns have also been raised about targeting users on shared networks, but any customers who don’t want their data being sent to Phorm should contact their ISP and find out how to opt out of the targeted advertising.”
Related article - Internet security.
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