Quote:
Originally Posted by Digbert
I was just browsing round some online computer retailers (pcworld, ebuyer, scan, etc) adding items to my shopping basket. If I then go to the checkout all the items and prices are listed, it's only when I go to pay that http: changes to https:
Does this mean that Phorm/Webwise will not only be able to see all the items/prices of everything I want to purchase but will also be able to calculate the value and volume of daily sales of such sites, something I'm sure those sort of sites would prefer to keep confidential.
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All the content of the http pages will be scanned, so in theory the contents of a number of shopping baskets (for example) could be analysed to calculate this information. However, from what we know about the Webwise/OIX system (see Richard Clayton's analysis), the software does not appear to record information at the level of detail to do this consistently and accurately, and as far as I know there is no intention to do this anyway.
This is an important point you raise as most of the discussion about Webwise/OIX so far has centered on the privacy concerns of the internet user rather than the websites and the individuals, companies and other organisations that are running these websites. My feeling is that there is currently a low level of awareness about Webwise/OIX amongst website owners - I certainly have concerns but until we know more details including which pages are going to be scanned, I can't advise clients as to what actions to take. My feeling is that website owners shouldn't have to take any action - it should be opt-in for website owners as well as for web users.
As a example of how Webwise/OIX can affect a company's business consider an ecommerce site as you described. A company is likely to have spent a lot of time and money attracting people to the site through providing good, relevant content, pay-per-click advertising etc. Any prospective customers and the content they view will get picked up by Webwise, and on visiting an OIX partner site, that prospective customer may be delivered an advert for a product related to that content. Retailers will not be pleased that their hard work is effectively being used to deliver adverts for a competitor!
Another area that is likely to be important to website owners concerns protected content. There is no indication that Webwise can accurately determine whether a user is authenticated (there are a large number of ways that a user may be authenticated) so it looks likely that protected content will be scanned in many cases - this information may be commercially sensitive so this is clearly a concern for the website owner.
I could go on but these are some of the issues that website owners will be interested in, and Phorm's proposed opt-out for websites using a file originally designed to tell search engines which pages cannot be indexed (robots.txt) does not adequately address the issues. And this totally ignores any legal issues there may be with the Webwise/OIX system in the first place.