Phorm online surveillance

The subject of Phorm and its adware/spyware technology has been covered in depth by lots of bloggers and journalists. I probably shouldn't bother writing this but it just annoys me so much.

If you are not aware of this technology then here is a brief rundown so far:

A company that produces spyware decides that hijacking people's computers is not an efficient enough way of tracking Internet usage. For one thing that pesky anti-virus software keeps uninstalling their lovely program. So they develop some software and equipment that tracks people's use of the Internet, without requiring access to the user's PC. They ask the three biggest Internet Service Providers in the UK to install it. The ISPs agree.

I just can't see the difference between this and phone tapping. This seems exactly the same as a phone provider allowing companies to install equipment to listen to its customer's telephone calls and record any 'keywords' in the conversations.

What annoys me almost as much as this technology is the way it is being sold. Phorm rather cleverly decided to slip a Phishing filter into their software. That means that they can sell it as making your browsing safer. The fact that IE7 and Firefox, not to mention Google and other companies already do this for free is ignored.

If you want to find out more about this then here are some links. Also if you are in the UK please sign the petition.

The Register has done some great investigative stuff in this area.

BT's sickening explanation

The fight back from badphorm.co.uk (not to mention the slightly amusing play on words)

Still here? You should be off following those links by now. If you stay then you will only get ranted at.

So Consent anyway is a strange concept. Politicians can do unpopular things (like go to war) because they have the consent of the people. This is gained once every four or five years, normally just after 6 months of good behaviour and tax cuts. As regards Phorm and Consent the waters are just as murky.

Phorm and BT appear to believe that your consent to be tracked can be assumed. If you do not consent then you can find their opt-out page and register your objection. This of course relies on you realising you are being monitored and then bothering to do something about it. So opting out will probably be limited to paranoid geeks.

Phorm also believes that the other party involved, the websites you are visiting, has also given consent. When you visit a website with Phorm tracking you, then Phorm will see the contents of that website. Phorm's assertion is that the website is available on the Internet therefore consent to be viewed has been given. This of course ignores the fact that many of those websites have terms of service that prevent their content being used to commercial benefit other organisations. Also it ignores the fact that a lot of webmasters are paranoid geeks and therefore will never give their consent.