Quote:
Originally Posted by Barkotron
Do Tesco send all their transactional data to a company run by people with a known history of morally repugnant and debatably legal behaviour? Do they use methods which differ from criminal behaviour only in so far as they are sanctioned by the ISP in question without referral to those whose personal data is being mistreated in this way? Do they send it to a company with roots in a country which has a deserved reputation for online crime and fraud, who process it on servers located in a country famous for repression and no privacy legislation at all? Do they take the information whether you want them to or not, and only allow you to "opt-out" of whether you receive the "benefits" of their data mining?
Equating supermarket clubcards with this is very wide of the mark.
This Phorm company is run by a guy who admits with no apparent trace of guilt to have been involved in installing adware and rootkits on users' systems without their knowledge in order to give them unwanted pop-up adverts (google PeopleOnPage for details. Both Symantec and F-Secure have this company listed as "spyware").
The technology is nothing short of an ISP-sanctioned man-in-the-middle attack, which if perpetrated by anyone other than an ISP would be illegal in most European countries, and may well in any case be illegal.
As far as I understand it, exporting personal data to other countries is in any case illegal unless an explicit opt-in (NOT out) has been obtained under the Data Protection Act. Phorm's excuse that they "anonymise" the data appears extremely flimsy according to those who have had a good look at what their system proposes to do.
It appears that the "opt-out" is purely that you will not have targeted adverts - your data will still be processed by these servers whether you have opted out or not.
Even if the above were not the case, there is absolutely no benefit at all to the end user of this technology. It will add lag to your connection, provide "phishing protection" which is already built in to Windows if using Windows and available free from other providers if not - without having adverts shoved in your face. It adds no value at all to their service and sells everything you do online to people who have no business looking at it - is that really what you want?
|
Tescos certainly have much more personal data on ther card holders than Phorm will ever have. Name Address, e-mail, phone, as a minimum and lots more depending on what you have used your card for. This is more than just what websites you have been browsing. And they do targetted ads.
One example springs to mind when a female custoemr rang Tescos to ask why they had sent her money off coupons for condoms. She was very insistent that she and her husband never used them. The customer service rep at the other end then confirmed that according to their records condoms had indeed been purchased and a clubcard used. I guess hubby had some explaining to do.
