5 April, 2008

Guardian now Phorm-free

A major resource for the exchange of information to combat Phorm web traffic tracking and analysis has been the Guardian's comments pages, so it's somewhat... odd that the newspaper itself used Phorm's services.  No longer.  As The Register reports, the Grauniad has become the first 'commercial partner' to dump Phorm.

With opposition from such web dignitaries as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a legal challenge by Fipr and revelations that Phorm has already been covertly tracking BT customers, let's hope the message gets through that this form of ad-targetting is simply, beyond negotiation, unacceptable, especially from a (ex?)spyware company.

Reminders:
Consent for Phorm (or similar trackers) to track the Ministry's visitors is explicitly withheld.
A simple technique for client-side blocking of Phorm's tracking is described here.