Quote:
Originally Posted by JHM
Not sure if your first paragraph is correct.
The BT produced schematic for how the trial will work, shows that if there is an opt-out cookie present or if you block Webwise.net, then you data goes nowhere near the profiler. See: http://webwise.bt.com/webwise/customer_choice.html
However, if you op-in to the trial and then block Webwise.net, then my understanding is that your browsing could well grind to a halt.
John |
Here is the reply I got on 18th April from a BT manager.
Beginning of quote -
11) What will happen to the "browsing experience" of a BT customer who adds all the various oix/phorm/webwise domains to his/her HOSTS file, once Webwise/Phorm is in place? Will that "break" my browsing experience?
Answer from manager - If a customer who is invited to participate in the trial adds
www.webwise.net to their local HOSTS file with the resolved address of 127.0.0.1, they will not be able to browse the Internet on HTTP port 80 on that PC for the period of the trial. This is because access to
www.webwise.net is required in order to process the consent status of the user during the trial. Instead, and as per the advice on the
www.bt.com/webwise site, the recommended approach for excluding a PC from the Webwise service if the user regularly deletes cookies is to add
www.webwise.net to the browser's blocked cookie list. As previously stated, in parallel with the forthcoming trial, we are developing a solution which will manage the choice of users without the use of cookies. We believe this approach is reasonable and is supported by the advice we have received. - end of quote
As you can see the answer is ambiguous, and only refers to the trial. It suggests that the trial will require a cookie based opt-out but leaves open the possibility of a non cookie based opt-out for the future.
As you can see the answer avoids dealing with the situation of a customer who is NOT in the trial, but has no cookie, and who has the webwise.net domain blocked in HOSTS. I'm sure this vagueness is deliberate. If the trial goes ahead, we'll find out very easily.It could be argued from this manager's answer that even opting out (or ignoring) the trial altogether, will require a cookie and access to
www.webwise.net.