Virgin Media have posted a statement on their website to update their customers on behavioural advertising technology they have been looking into - including Phorm, which they signed a deal to look into (along with BT and TalkTalk) in February 2008.The statement, which went up towards the end of this week, says:
Over the last 18 months, Virgin Media has conducted a comprehensive technical and legal assessment of Phorm's technology and consumers' attitudes towards interest-based advertising. This review has not involved the deployment of Phorm technology across our network.
We continue to believe interest-based advertising has potentially important benefits for consumers, internet service providers and website owners. However, given the fast moving nature of the sector, Virgin Media intends to extend its review of potential opportunities with suppliers including Phorm prior to making any commitment to launch any of these technologies.
We recognise some consumers have significant concerns about the potential implications of interest-based advertising for their privacy. Virgin Media is committed to ensuring that any future deployment complies not only with the relevant legal requirements but - as an absolute minimum - the best practice guidelines contained in the Internet Advertising Bureau's recently published code of practice.
Virgin Media will communicate openly and transparently with consumers before and after any future deployment of interest-based advertising technologies across its network.
Reference
You can download a copy of the Internet Advertising Bureau's Good Practice Principles for Online Behavioural Advertising here.
The statement appears to mark that other company's technology is now being looked into - not just Phorm any longer.
2 comments:
Also check this IAB code of conduct, although US based, it is unlikely that large Web based Companies would want different complicated/competing codes of conduct on the internet.
http://www.iab.net/behavioral-advertisingprinciples
This statement is a continuation of Virgin Media's fence sitting, which has been going on since the middle of last year. Someone there must have a sore backside by now...
VM wants (needs?) to get money in from whatever sources it can and Phorm's "product" offers them the chance of money.
Trouble for them is that a lot of people believe Phorm's "product" is illegal and have been campaigning since the Phorm story broke in Febraury 2008. UK.gov's flawed refusal to enforce the law against BT and Phorm for their secret testing in 2007 has led to the EU taking legal action.
Let me quote Rudolf Strohmeier of the European Commission:
"in all his years working at the Commission there had only been 1 or 2 other issues which had generated such a high volume of written complaints from the public so they were taking the matter very seriously, which is why they initiated infringement action against the UK Government last month."
Not a small minority of loonies complaining then...
So it is that Virgin, having initially signed a preliminary agreement with Phorm (Virgin Media's words) finds itself stuck between the agreement and the ongoing consumer backlash.
Virgin Media have tried to sit on the fence as best they can. The Guardian and Orange dumped Phorm for ethical and privacy reasons but Virgin Media want (need?) the money so they keep saying there's an agreement but nothing more at the moment. Keeps them nice and safe until the EU legal action has reached a verdict.
Many customers have left Virgin Media already in protest. I did and it's not that difficult to do. I'm now with an ISP that doesn't throttle, that doesn't panic when I say I'm running Linux, doesn't say "Sorry, we don't know owt about Thunderbird" and has said it will not sign up with Phorm.
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