Concerns over data pimping deal

Last Modified: 04 Mar 2008
By: Channel 4 News

Three major internet service providers have agreed to sell details of their customers browing habits to an advertising company.

The information would then be used to target customers with online advertising.

BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse, who between them have more than 10 million internet customers, have agreed a deal with Phorm, run by serial entrepreneur Kent Ertegrul.

The three ISPs will feed data on their subscribers' web activities to Phorm's Open Internet Exchange, where advertisers will pay to target interest groups. The arrangement would mean, for example, that a frequent visitor to the Autocar website would expect to receive more car adverts.

The arrangement might mean, for example, that a frequent visitor to the Autocar website would expect to receive more car adverts.

Ertegul's previous ventures include PeopleOnPage, an ad network that was blacklisted as spyware by several anti-virus software producers.

Phorm maintains that its technology actually offers improved privacy by comparison with advertising-targeting databases run by companies such as Google because the Open Internet Exchange only stores data while it is needed to serve an ad and then discarded.

Amid fears that millions of customers' privacy could be compromised by the deal, a spokesman for the Information Commissioner's Office told The Register, a technology news website, that: "We have now met with them (Phorm) and asked for some more information that we're now looking at."