BT's 2008 Trial
On 29th September 2008, The Register announced that BT would start their third trial on the following day, 30th September 2008. The Trial covered customers in BT's Kingston RAS which extends as far afield as as far afield as Glasgow, Belfast, Cardiff and Penzance.
Those asked to join the trial would have their web browsing interrupted by an invitation web page which:
- Did not state explicitly that acceptance could result in most future web activity being read and profiled
- Could be accepted by someone other than the main account holder such as a visitor or a child
On Wednesday 22nd October, some three weeks after the trial started, the first example of a Webwise invitation page was reported. Screenshots indicated that BT's invitation process was indeed as they had announced.
Screenshots and photos of the invitation page were posted here and here, and of BT's Webwise "find out more" page here and here.
Complaints were submitted to the Information Commissioner and other bodies focussing on the apparent absence of clear and comprehensive information about which data will be processed by BT's Webwise systems, and the ambiguity of who is actually giving consent to having all web activity intercepted and read, with much of it profiled.
On 9th October a dissatisfied Webwise invitee wrote a post on his blog his experiences with Webwise.
On 31st October 2008, a BT Broadband user reported that the Webwise invitation page prevented web browsing from working on his HTC620.
Meanwhile, despite BT stating that PlusNet customers would not be included in Webwise trials a PlusNet customer had their web browsing interrupted to receive an invitation on 10th November 2008. PlusNet quickly confirmed to The Register that this was a mistake.
On 21st November, an analysis of how the BT Webwise page interrupts triallists' web browsing was published in the NoDPI Forums.
On 27th November, the same PlusNet customer whose web browsing was interrupted with a Webwise invitation page on 10th November had their web browsing interrupted with a Webwise invitation page again.
BT Forums
The BT Forum thread on the current Webwise trial cannot now be found here.
And previous threads cannot be found here nor here.
On 19th November 2008, Media Post reported that "In a comically inept move, U.K. Internet service provider BT Group has decided to delete posts on its forums about its deployment of Phorm's controversial behavioral targeting platform."
On 21st November 2008, The Daily Telegraph reported that "BT has deleted a discussion thread from its user forums about the controversial targeted advertising system made by Phorm."
End of the 2008 Trial
BT announced that the trial had ended on 10th December 2008.