Phorm UK Launch ISPs

BT and Phorm

On 4th April 2008 BT confirmed its involvement with Phorm and the 2006 and 2007 trials.

BT's Webwise Pages can be found here.

Phorm's former Chief Technical Officer, Stratis Scleparis formerly held the same position at BT Retail.

Some difficult questions about BT's relationship with Phorm were asked at the BT's AGM on 16th July 2008.

On 8th September 2008, BT's Bruce Schneier stated that he could not write about Phorm.

On 29th September 2008, Phorm announced that they would start their third trial with BT on the following day, 30th September 2008.

On 4th November 2008, a webmaster reported that a BT legal spokesperson had told them that regardless of whether website owners consented to the exploitation of their material by Webwise, BT believed they had an implied licence to use it. "... we do not consider that an express consent is required from website owners for copyright purposes. We consider that the Webwise mirroring process is generally covered by an implied licence and that putting a notice on a website is not sufficient to overturn that implied licence."

On 10th February 2009, The Register reported BT Group chief press officer Adam Liversage as stating that BT was still assessing the findings of the trial, but that it still intended to proceed to full rollout.

Ealy on Monday 6th July  The Guardian reported that UK Internet Service Provider BT had "quietly ditched a controversial system that tracks the internet habits of its customers, developed by the technology firm Phorm." Later that day, in a Stock Exchange RNS announcement, Phorm confirmed that BT was not proceeding with a deployment of its technology in the UK.

On the same day, The BBC reported BT spokesman Mike Jarvis as saying that "[Our decision has] nothing to do with cost or privacy, it's about resources and priority" implying that other projects were more commercially attractive.

And also on 6th July BT's former Chief Press Officer, Adam Liversage tweeted: "A year of the most intensive, personal-reputation-destroying PR trench warfare all comes to nothing at the end of the day. Phantastic...".

During the week of 20th July 2009, a concerted effort by campaigners to have BT's Webwise (Phorm) webpages removed met with considerable success. However, on the one remaining Webwise page, BT confirmed that "the interest based advertising market is extremely dynamic and we intend to monitor Phorm's progress with other ISPs and with Webwise Discover before finalising our plans", keeping the door open for equally intrusive technologies to be deployed in the future.

Virgin Media and Phorm

Virgin Media's Webwise Pages state that "we have not yet decided if it will be introduced".

On 11th November 2008 at the Investors' meeting in New York, Virgin Media's chief executive Neil Berkett stated that "Our next initiative probably won't be with the Phorms of the world."

On 12th November 2008, a Virgin Media spokesman told ISP Review that "Whilst we are still investigating the use of Phorm's technology under our existing agreement with the company, due to the complexities of the proposition we do not have any timescales on when, or if, we will progress to trial or full launch."

On 9th July 2009 following BT's decision not to proceed with a deployment of Phorm's technology, and TalkTalk's decision to terminate its agreement with Phorm, IT Pro reported that Virgin Media had confirmed it has no immediate plans to roll out "Phorm's controversial Webwise deep packet inspection system". However, "the spokesperson noted that it had not ruled out behavioural advertising or indeed Phorm", keeping the door open for equally intrusive technologies to be deployed in the future.

TalkTalk and Phorm - no longer partners

On 10th March 2008, Charles Arthur of The Guardian reported that An email from Charles Dunstone, head of Carphone Warehouse, stated that TalkTalk customers who wanted to use Phorm would have to positively opt-in.

On 21st November 2008, in a report headlined Four of Six Major U.K. ISPs Shy Away from Phorm ClickZ reported that:
... a Talk Talk spokesperson said the company was "very committed to Phorm." In September, Phorm said it expected the ISP to carry out trials of its technology, in reference to which the spokesperson said, "We may not conduct consumer trials, we may just roll it out. We will invite customers to choose whether or not to be involved. We don't have a time line at present ..."

On 8th May 2009, Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse was interviewed by the BBC. When asked whether he was going ahead with Phorm, he replied that
"Its something that we're still looking at. We've never implemented it or even tested it on the network yet... The privacy of our customer is one of the most important things that we have and our relationship with them is founded upon that".

Early on Tuesday 7th July The Times reported that Carphone Warehouse (TalkTalk) had also decided not to proceed with Phorm. Charles Dunstone, head of Carphone Warehouse, said: "We were only going to do it if BT did it and if the whole industry was doing it. We were not interested enough to do it on our own." Carphone Warehouse's termination of its agreement with Phorm was confirmed by Phorm themselves on 8th July in an RNS Announcement.

Major UK ISPs rejecting Phorm

Orange and Phorm

Orange have never signed any agreement with Phorm. On 30th October 2008, The Financial Times reported that Orange had decided not to use Phorm because of concerns about protecting its customers' data. The article quoted Paul-François Fournier, senior vice-president of Orange's online advertising division: "Privacy is in our DNA, so we need to be honest and clear about what we are doing ... We have decided not to be in Phorm because of that ... The way it was proposed, the privacy issue was too strong".

Tiscali UK and Phorm

Tiscali UK have never signed any agreement with Phorm. On 18th November 2008, Tiscali's CEO, Mary Turner confirmed to an ISP Review reader that "We have not implemented Phorm or any similar behavioural targeting system and we do not have any plans to do so."

Sky and Phorm

On 21st November 2008, in a report headlined Four of Six Major U.K. ISPs Shy Away from Phorm ClickZ reported that:
. . . a spokesperson for Sky Broadband implied the firm would not make use of network-level technologies in their current forms, despite having spoken with a number of companies operating in the area. "Of paramount importance is the online safety of our customers, and we will only implement a solution when we can use customer data in a responsible way which safeguards privacy ..."

Phorm response to ISP executives' statements

At a debate on behavioural targeting organised by the University of Westminster on 23rd November 2008, Nick Barnett, Phorm's UK Commercial Director responded that these were the positions of company executives and not necessarily of the companies themselves. He dismissed Tiscali who were looking for a buyer. The statement from Orange had come from a group executive and was not necessarily the view of Orange UK. He was meeting that executive shortly. Discussions continued with Sky. Virgin was still a Phorm partner - indeed Phorm and Virgin met on more or less a weekly basis.