[bluecar1]

Originally Posted by R Jones

First point - I'm not a techie so consider me ignorant on the details.

BT have said they are "working on" a cookie free solution and have not chosen to enlighten us any further.
I don't understand the technical issues but it seems like a major retrofit to the system, and rather makes a cookie based trial fairly pointless.

opted in users will still need a cookie or they will not be able to identify the user on a pc to target the adverts efficiently,

There has also been comment that this can only be done in certain ways, ONE of which MIGHT involve separating out customers (by IP address) into opted-IN and NOT opted-IN groups (I refuse to use terms like opted out) and routing them differently around or through the corrosive Phorm spykit depending on which group they were in.

there is a problem with this as BT do not own or run the kit dishing out IP addresses, BT Wholesale do and they are not allowed to co-operate with each other

In which case (and again I am in deep technical water over my pedantic head) - they would need
a) to get domestic customers on static IP addresses - at the moment only BT Business customers are on static IP addresses - and they aren't part of Webwise (so BT say - although Stephen Mainwaring might take issue with that!!).

nope, they cant give BTR customers static addresses as if the opt-in and then later choose NOT to opt-in they would need to change IP to bypass the profiler / DPI kit, so BT would need to operate 2 seperate DHCP pools, but there is another issue, all ISP's are running out of addresses so there will not be enough IP addresses to allow for two pools each capable of holding all customers in case all users either opt in or not

b) if they want to play IP address hockey they (BT Retail) need access to bits of the infrastructure (some grey boxes I don't understand) that are legally and commercially under the control of BT Wholesale for competition regulatory reasons. This is not allowed.

see above

c) IP addresses become part of the significant PII being processed?

any method of an identifier uniquely assigned to a person is defined under EU regs as PII, be it number, IP or name.
phorm say they do not collect IP's. this is partly to try and avoid the issue of PII and also they are of no use as BT use dynamic (changing) IP's , if they were to deploy this on BT business link that would be different as they all have static IP's

Again - ignore me as unqualified on any of the technical assumptions, but believe me on what BT have "said". I'm clear on that.

yep

peter