Well, I just got a response from VM's customer complaints department:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Virgin Media
Thank you for your e-mail dated 15 April 2008 regarding Phorm, the
company behind Webwise and Virgin Media.
Although Virgin Media have signed a provisional agreement with Phorm, we
still have a lot of work to do in evaluating various aspects of any
possible deployment. As a result, it may be some months before we are in
a position to confirm how and when the solution will be implemented, or
indeed if we choose to go ahead with it.
As we have not yet decided on if and, in particular, how the Webwise
system will be incorporated into our network, it is impossible to
speculate about any changes to customers' terms and conditions. However,
you can be assured that should your service change in such a way that
modifies your terms and conditions as stated, and if you are unhappy,
you will be free to leave.
In respect of your question regarding ownership of data, at no time does
Virgin Media make any such assumptions : should we deploy Webwise in the
future, customers will be fully informed and will not be forced to use
the system. We take seriously the privacy concerns of our customers
therefore would never pass any details, or browsing history to any third
party without the customers' acceptance.
We will be communicating our intentions openly and transparently and
will be letting all our customers know before rolling out the Webwise
solution and we'll clearly explain how the system works .
You can also be assured consumer concerns around privacy and data
protection, not to mention any adverse impact on Virgin Media's
reputation, are (and will remain) an important element in our
deliberations, dependant upon implementation we will advise any impact
to customers terms and conditions.
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This allays one of my fears (that they'd find some way to pretend that this wasn't enough of a change in the service to allow me leaving penalty-free), and kind of suggests that they might be looking into not going ahead with the whole system. Nothing, however, on my question as to whether my opted-out data would still be passing through the Phorm systems if it did go ahead.