Phorm Starts Phoaming At The Mouth Over Its Detractors

Phorm, the targeted advertising company that’s the scourge of the privacy brigade, is actively fighting back against its detractors with a new website, stopphoulplay.com. See what they did there? “Phoul”? These guys crack me up!

Phorm is a software that follows an internet user around the internet, picking up on what they visit and targeting advertising according to their tastes – they say they never store IP addresses or histories of visited websites, and you can opt out at any time. It’s all presented in a benign manner on their main website, unlike the aggressive Stop Phoul Play site, which dubs anti-Phorm campaigner Alexander Hanff “The Angry Activist”, and others “pirates” and “serial agitators”. Hanff replied with a sarcasm-laden blog post, and said he may have been libelled by a piece in the Telegraph that sided with Phorm’s line. The juiciest bit of that piece is where Phorm chief exec Kent Ertegrul suggests that anti-Phorm campaigners are actually its competitors in disguise. Phorm have to be careful here – they’re starting to sound like that guy everyone avoids eye contact with on the bus.

Which is not what they need, just as the anti-Phorm campaign is gaining real traction. First there was Amazon opting out of the software scanning its visitors, after a customer complained. Then Wikipedia opted out too, saying: “We consider the scanning and profiling of our visitors’ behaviour by a third-party to be an infringement on their privacy”. And Phorm’s worst bit of PR to date continues to haunt them – after they scanned BT’s customers without their consent, the case has gone all the way to the European Commission, who are starting legal proceedings this week.

Then yesterday it was revealed that the Home Office had been having an email back-and-forth with Phorm, asking them whether they were happy with its analyses of targeted advertising. “The fact the Home Office asks the very company they are worried is actually falling outside the laws whether the draft interpretation of the law is correct is completely bizarre”, said Baroness Miller; Ertegrul said the accusations of “collusion” between the two were “untrue”. To be fair, it’s more that the Home Office have dropped the ball here. Phorm would have been mad not to take the opportunity to paint their company in a better light; the Home Office really should have looked harder for people to advise on this issue. But what with Kip Meek, former Ofcom head, on Phorm’s board, it’s clear that they’ve got some useful connections in high places.

Phorm could potentially help save journalism – with advertising revenues down, ads that annoy readers less and might actually fully engage them and prompt sales of whatever product it is, can have much greater premiums attached to them. And if their software is as benign as they say it is, then there’s really no problem. However, what they’re getting badly wrong is not being sensitive to the fact that people are extremely wary of being watched. Instead of taking people’s concerns seriously, Phorm are just shaking people and saying “this is fine, you frickin’ idiot!” And instead of focusing on creating a positive PR campaign that puts everyone’s minds at rest, they’ve instead lost their cool and started rabidly attacking their detractors.

Even if it doesn’t take anyone’s details, the very fact something is following you is enough to upset people, and understandably so; the fact Phorm are so insensitive to this that they’d run trials without asking people’s permission, as they did with BT, could mean they’ve already dug their own grave.

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Creative Economy | April 29, 2009 10:57AM |