Initial Reaction
On 18th March 2008, an editorial entitled "The right to online privacy" in The Daily Telegraph stated: "The Home Office has drawn up guidance suggesting that web-tracking should be legal so long as customers have given their consent. This is not good enough, since providers can sneak this approval into the small print of their terms of service updates. It is vital that consumers' right to privacy is protected. Service deals should be transparent. Users should not be forced constantly to consider the secondary implications of going to any given website."
On 7th April 2008, the "Freedom to Tinker" blog identified some of the key issues with Phorm in an article entitled "Phorm's Harms Extend Beyond Privacy".
On 9th April 2008 the BBC reported Richard Clayton, Treasurer of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, as stating that "The Phorm system is highly intrusive; it's like the Post Office opening all my letters to see what I'm interested in, merely so that I can be sent a better class of junk mail."
Phorm Town Hall Meeting 15th April 2008
On Tuesday 15th April 2008 a Phorm Open Meeting was held in London. Unedited Video Footage is available here.
- Simon Davies Introducing The Event And 80/20 Thinking's Role
- Kent Ertegrul's Presentation
- Dr Richard Clayton on The Problems With Phorm
- Dr Richard Clayton's Q&A Session
- Alexander Hanff On The Legal, Historical and Social Context of Phorm
On 1st May 2008 following the public meeting, Out-Law published an editorial The law of Phorm: "Critics have branded Phorm a regulatory rogue. Its targeted advertising technology will bend our laws and even break them. But these will be hairline fractures - even if Phorm's operation makes you wince."
Broadcasts and Podcasts
In early May, BBC Click ran a piece in which Kent Ertugrul (Phorm's CEO) and Alexander Hanff (IT specialist and critic of Phorm) put their points of view.
Steve Gibson also covered Phorm in his "Security Now" podcasts:
http://twit.tv/sn151
http://twit.tv/sn153
Response to BT's 2008 Webwise Trial
On 30th September 2008, the Open Rights Group published 4 good reasons not to take part in the BT Webwise trial.
November 2008's Prospect magazine included an article by Peter Bazalgette (Chairman of Endemol UK) "Who needs digital privacy" in which he gave a qualified welcome to Phorm. Prospect published a response to this from Becky Hogge of The Open Rights Group entitled "We all need digital privacy".
On 8th November 2008, a poster to the BT Forums published a detailed feature on BT and trust entitled If BT are inspecting all my internet packets, can I trust them?. The original can no longer be found on the BT Forum itself but a PDF has been saved here at Inphormationdesk.
On 25th November 2008, NMK (part of the University of Westminster) ran an event entitled "Behavioural Targeting: the Fire and the Fury" with panellists from Phorm, Specific Media and the Oxford Internet Institute. A pdf report of the evening can be downloaded here.
Ongoing Public Discussion
Much of the public discussion on Phorm was carried out on the Virgin Media Cable Forum monster thread which started on 18th February 2008. Heightened emotions let to its closure after six months and over 14,000 posts on 16th August 2008. The discussion continues at NoDPI.
Further discussion on Phorm can be found in the BadPhorm forums.