Personally, I think they should be required by law to put the following at the top of the page:
"BT/VM/TT have entered into an agreement with Phorm Inc., to monitor your web browsing in order to build a profile and serve you with targeted advertising; and to warn you when you are trying to access a web site which is known to be a security risk.
We will monitor your web activities using Deep Packet Inspection which allows us to intercept and read all the information in your traffic data. As a result we are required to obtain your consent to do this under the following laws and statutes of the United Kingdom (and Europe):
European Convention on Human Rights
Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime
Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003
Human Rights Act 1998
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000
Computer Misuse Act 1990
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
Fraud Act 2006
Data Protection Act 1998
Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977
We recommend you read a technical analysis of this service written by Dr Richard Clayton from Cambridge University. A copy of the report can be found
here.
We also recommend you read all of the Laws and Statutes listed above before making an informed decision on whether or not to subscribe to this service."
See now -that- would be Informed Consent if the user opted in after such a notice. Of course the downside is, how can the user read the Acts and Technical report without either opting in or opting out of Phorm first, given the current page is the only web site they can access.
Alexander Hanff