BT's 2006 Trial

BT 2006 Trial (The Register, 1st April 2008)

The BT Paper describing the 2006 Webwise/Phorm Trial was published on Wikileaks and is also available here.

On 6th June 2008, BT confirmed to ZDNet that the leaked documents were genuine (and they have not denied it anywhere else).

One feature of BT's 2006 trial of Phorm was that in some cases data between users and the websites they were visiting was changed by the injection of javascript. These changes to communications can be seen on the bikegirl forum where two user postings [no longer online] made on 21st and 22nd September 2006 were corrupted with javascript wrappers.

While the injection of javascript was classified by BT as an error, it raises significant worries about the future of this technology and its effect on the integrity of the Internet.

BT's 2007 Trial

BT 2007 Trial (The Register, 27th February 2008)

One user's experience of the 2007 trial at the time is documented at length on a ThinkBroadband Forum thread.

On 3rd April 2008 a Channel 4 report entitled BT 'spies' on customers was broadcast. This included the experience of one BT customer who was an unwitting participant in the 2007 trials and also a grilling for Emma Sanderson, Head of Value Added Services at BT.

Reaction to BT's Trials

Covering article by Alexander Hanff

Alexander Hanff's analysis of the BT Trials

Dr Richard Clayton calls for prosecutions (BBC, 5th June 2008)

Freedom of Information Request

On 20th June 2008, Phorm-related Correspondence between the Information Commissioner's Office, BT, Phorm and the Home Office was released under a Freedom of Information Request.

An analysis of the information obtained is set out here.

 

Details of the Police investigation into the 2006/07 Trials are now on their own Criminal Case attributions page.