Security Firms Wary of Phorm
Posted on: Tuesday, 22 April 2008, 09:15 CDT
Many PC security firms have announced that their software will block cookies used by Phorm, a controversial online advertising system.Phorm said it was working to clear up any confusion about how its advertisements were run.
By teaming up with ISPs in the UK including Virgin Media, TalkTalk and BT along with advertisers and other agencies, Phorm monitors the online surfing habits of users in order to “make online advertising more relevant.”
As with other online advertisers, Phorm uses cookies to target ads to consumers.
Some computer security systems, however, may give customers the option to block Phorm’s cookie, thus labeling it as “adware.”
Stefan Lundstrom, an anti-spyware researcher at F-Secure, said that Phorm has become a hot topic among researchers, adding that F-Secure would make a final decision once Phorm was officially released.
“Phorm have hinted that most ISP's will choose an opt-out solution based on a cookie," he said. "We have expressed our concern that's not informed consent and most likely will meet our detection criteria."
Other online security firms Symantec, Trend Micro and McAfee came to similar conclusions . They said they would monitor Phorm as it gets rolled out to see how the cookie is used in practice and whether users need warning about it.
"At this point we are assessing the full implications of this technology and how it fits into the established criteria we use for categorizing and classifying new technologies such as Phorm's," Symantec said in a statement.
Small business security firm Network Box will begin blocking the cookie when Phorm begins.
"We will continue to monitor this situation but browsing information is the user's property not the ISP's or anybody else's," said Simon Heron, managing director of Network Box.
Greg Day, security analyst at McAfee, said its discussions were still ongoing with Phorm.
"At this point we have not rushed to give it a classification," he said.
Mr. Day added that it would come down to Phorm answering a very specific question.
"Is the customer aware of it and do they have the choice of whether to opt in or out?"
In an April 14 press release, Phorm announced a filing with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that said: “it is unnecessary to retain consumers’ Internet browsing data for online behavioral advertising to be effective.”
The FTC was concerned about the length of time that Phorm and other companies retained user information for behavioral advertising purposes.
"The reality of it is that the Phorm cookie is a cookie like any other. It is an inactive piece of text that's dropped on your computer just like any other third party tracking software," said a Phorm spokesman, adding that other ad-serving companies, such as Google, give users no choice to avoid being shown targeted ads.
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Source: redOrbit Staff and Wire Reports
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User Comments (2)
| 2. |
Posted by Paul Delaney on 04/22/2008, 15:29 The reality of it is that Google provides the customer with a service in return for targeted ads. Remind me what benefit does Phorm provide? Don't tell me - it's that (probably used as a smokescreen) Anti-Phishing protection that everybody has already! DO NOT WANT |
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Posted by MarkH on 04/22/2008, 11:17 "The reality of it is that the Phorm cookie is a cookie like any other. It is an inactive piece of text that's dropped on your computer just like any other third party tracking software," said a Phorm spokesman, adding that other ad-serving companies, such as Google, give users no choice to avoid being shown targeted ads. Absolute nonsense as always from the Phorm PR drones. There are extensions for Firefox to make the google cookie anonymous, other advertising sites can be blocked at the Hosts file level, or in a router blocked domains list. Recently British Telecom, one of Phorm's partner ISP's have confirmed to their own customers that redirecting the webwise.net domain (they will be using the name webwise for this intra-ISP Spyware) to localhost in the Hosts file will prevent them from browsing any pages on port 80 because the webwise machine needs to inspect your traffic to see if you are opted in or not. That is by no means protecting consumer privacy, that is exploiting it by removing the consumers choice of how their data traffic should be handled. |
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