Online Ad System Phorm Problematic

By Digital Trends Staff April 15, 2008

Since it signed up three British ISPs – BT, Virgin, and CarphoneWarehouse – to a trial of its online ad system, Phorm has been coming under fire. The idea itself is very clever, as it matches a user’ssurfing habits with ad channels in order to produce personally targeted ads, using keywords in the sites visited. However, although Phorm has been praised by some for its data protection, itwas rapped at a meeting for its security problems. According to the BBC, at a meeting, Dr Richard Clayton, a Cambridge University professor and treasurer of theFoundation for Information Policy Research, explained that when a user visits a page, in some instances a request will bounced between Phorm and the page three times before completion, which left itopen to hacking. He’d been invited by the company to look at Phorm’s architecture. "I don’t think it improves the stability of the internet," he said. Phorm’s chief executive, Kent Ertegrul, explained this happened in under 1% of cases, and didn’t affect the user experience. He also said that after taking legal advice, he was satisfiedthat Phorm didn’t break any UK privacy laws, and actually had the power to transform the Net. "The internet today is two to three professionals – Microsoft, Yahoo and Google – and 9,999,999 hobbyists. Phorm makes all websites capable ofmaking a living."

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