I’d sort of seen posts around the net regarding the evils of Phorm. I took a quick look and thought, well so what, I take no notice of adverts and anyway, Phorm are wasting their time with me.

What’s Phorm you ask? At its simplest, Phorm is an internet marketing company which sells advertising on web pages, which sounds innocuous enough if somewhat unsavoury. However, it’s not so much, what Phorm does but how it does it that has people up in arms. Now I’d try to explain how it works, but details are vague, and anyway, I probably wouldn’t understand, so couldn’t, however The Register has some diagrams from BT.

What seems to be the consensus is that Phorm would receive details of every page you visit. If BadPhorm‘s correct then we have a lot to worry about.

Phorm doesn’t just see the URL of every page you visit, they see the entire content of every single web page (with the exception of encrypted pages). That means they can read your mail if you use most types of webmail, view all the posts you make or read on web forums, obtain the content of most webforms you complete, in fact just about anything you do on the web that is not encrypted can be hoovered up by Phorm. Phorm claim they do not store this information for more than 14 days.

Why should I worry? Surely, my ISP wouldn’t do this. Wrong, these IPS have sighed up Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk.

But, look I can opt out it says so on their website. Well I wouldn’t be too sure of a company believed by some to be related to the Russian secret services. Still, I’m starting to have a David Icke moment and starting to see all sorts of conspiracy theories.

Look at the end of the day don’t do anything on the internet you wouldn’t stand in the street and shout out loud about. Sad in many ways, but true.

If you’re concerned or just want to annoy these people then install TOR a system that helps defend against traffic analysis.

Oh, one last thing a Wired FAQ shows what AOL was up to back in 2006, remember two years is a long as far as technology is concerned.

Source: Postman Patel.