Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff
snip
So it seems the www.webwise.bt.com is in fact in the US and all the rest are controlled by Phorm in the UK (registered to Phorm in the UK).
Of course this means the www.webwise.bt.com is subject to US Law and can have all the logs subpoenaed. It would be advisable not enter any information onto that website. It also seems it should be classed as illegal under Data Protection Act which disallows the exporting of personal data outside the EU.
Anyone brought this to the attention of ICO yet? I notice there is at least 1 form on there which requires you to enter sensitive personal data:
http://www.webwise.bt.com/webwise/contact.php
So this would indeed appear to be in direct breach of the DPA. In theory if ThePlanet have any DPI kit in their data centre (which I believe although I could be wrong, is required under US anti terrorist initiatives) they could in essence get all the details you enter on that form. I know there is a degree of logging in the US similar to data retention laws in the EU, but I don't know to what extent so I can't give any informed comments on it. I will however try to find out.
Alexander Hanff |
I am in the process of cotacting ICO with reference particularly to the BT Webwise Contact Us page, and the trace information above will be very helpful. I will copy the ICO complaint to the BT legal department.
Interesting that the page has the BT logo in the same place as it is on bt.com homepage, and the links at the bottom are just the same as on the genuine BT page, and the link to contact.php says "contact BT" but contains NO warnings that you just stepped out of the EU privacy protection zone. It's a complete utter con - and what's more - they know, and they know that we know - because I asked them about it AGES ago, and they even put up mirror BT Webwise pages on bt.com in response to my complaint about not wanting to visit FASTHOSTS or US hosted pages - but they didn't create any warnings.
Add to this the fact that BT Retail's own ISP pages currently offer NO customer route to information about BT Webwise, and it looks pretty pathetic - their BTYahoo! help returns zero hits for "webwise", and the bt.com search pages return one hit for "webwise" with a broken link (because they've just changed all the webwise pages to php but not told the bt.com search engine which still links to index.html rather than index.php so returning an error page). And they talk about informed consent!
I've also made reference to it in my original letter to BT Retail Legal department but not with all that trace info as the letter went in over a week ago.
I've also asked Emma Sanderson if she could just fill in the blanks with regard to which coloured boxes on the BT Webwise network diagram relate to which IP addresses, at which location, in which country, and under whose control, and in partiucular, which of the coloured boxes are FASTHOSTS and which are THEPLANET.COM and which are BT.
I'm expecting at least a reply from ICO.