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Phorm strikes back

Phorm (AIM: PHRM) has launched a counter-attack in what they describe as media “guerrilla warfare” against a small but dedicated band of online “privacy pirates” who are, Phorm claims, targeting journalists, MPs, EU officials and regulators with the purpose of destroying the company.

What I am not sure about is why Phorm is surprised about this. All you had to do was to ask a bunch of techies what they thought would happen if DPI technology was commercially deployed in the UK (there is non-commercial DPI run by ISPs and Government, I don’t see anyone shouting about it…) to realise it would lead to an avalanche of “privacy pirates” voicing their opinion. If this is a “smear campaign” as Phorm puts it, or simply bloggers being bloggers, its worth having a look at both sides of the fence at http://www.stopphoulplay.com.

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Related posts:

• You’ve been de-Phormed, have a nice day :)
• Deep Packet Inspection takes another blow
• What is… Behavioural Targeting? Part I: Contextual, Re-targeting and Interest-based targeting

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You’ve been de-Phormed, have a nice day :)

Thanks to privacy advocate and anti-phorm campaigner Peter John of www.deformation.org.uk I found the way to stop Phorm from snooping and using your website’s data for their benefit.

In fact it’s quite simple as long as you have PHP or some server side technology on your web server.

An image (or another) request to your site responds with a cookie with the same format as Phorm’s opt-out cookie. So after you’ve opened this image in your browser Phorm won’t track what you do on my site. Neat!

In my case I used the default code and image from the dephormation script.

Have a look there for an easy how-to guide.

Have a nice day :)

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Related posts:

• Phorm strikes back
• Deep Packet Inspection takes another blow
• What is… Behavioural Targeting? Part I: Contextual, Re-targeting and Interest-based targeting

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Deep Packet Inspection takes another blow

After US congress put a halt to ISP-based tracking while they try to figure out where the “creepy factor” line is, NebudAd suspended it’s activities, Front Porch was forced to shut off the behavioural tracking part of their system and the latest to throw in the towel is now Adzilla who have put up on their home page “We have stepped out for a little…”.

With an opt-in model being tried out in the UK by Phorm starting last week, Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) is not dead yet, but it has definitely taken a step back.

Or forward, depending where you stand on the privacy concern fence.

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Related posts:

• What is… Behavioural Targeting? Part I: Contextual, Re-targeting and Interest-based targeting
• Phorm strikes back
• You’ve been de-Phormed, have a nice day :)

Posted in online media | No Comments »