View Single Post
Old 03-03-2008, 22:51   #454
Barkotron
Inactive
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 46
Barkotron will become famous soon enoughBarkotron will become famous soon enoughBarkotron will become famous soon enough
Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77 & 102]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jayceef1 View Post
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.
... and way, way over there in the distance is the point...

At every single transaction, Tesco have to ask me whether or not I wish to use a Clubcard (i.e. give them the ability to correlate what I am buying with my Clubcard account), and that's even if I choose to allow them to collate this data in the first place by carrying a Clubcard. Phorm get this information whether or not I wish them to.

Phorm say they "anonymise" email addresses and numbers longer than 3 digits long. My address is, say "94 Road Street, Townville, TV3 8BJ". How many email addresses and strings of digits are in that? How many emails to a web mail account from any web retailer e.g. confirming a delivery addresses will it take for Phorm to have access to this information? How many numeric digits long is your name?

There is no consent sought or given by Phorm, there is no _real_ opt-out, it _should_ be opt-in, they are run by people who I wouldn't trust with my full name, let alone my browsing data, they will be processing _and_ "anonymising" all of the data AFTER it arrives in China (where, incidentally, people care even less about all our Data Protection laws than formerly reputable companies like BT and VM here do), and we apparently have to trust these crooks?

Where exactly is the benefit to us here? What part of the above sounds like a good idea? Targeted adverts on the internet, where I already block all adverts I can and actively avoid giving money to those companies whose ads I can't block? "Phishing protection" which is given away free by reputable companies rather than apparently "reformed" purveyors of scumware?

Well, no. If Virgin continue with this, then I quit. You may be happy being treated like a hole used expressly for the purpose of vomiting money into VM shareholders' pockets, but 95% of people on this forum aren't. They can stuff their poxy ad revenue: the day they start running this scam is the day I cancel every one of their services.
Barkotron is offline