By George Norman - Software News Editor
Added on 31 Oct 2008(509 Views)
Or at least that is what Orange, the sixth largest broadband provider in the UK, said when it declared that it will not sign up with Phorm. According to Senior Vice-President of the Online Advertising Division with Google, Paul-François Fournier, there are some issues with the manner in which Orange customers’ data is protected.

Phorm technology works by analyzing your browsing history and according to what you look for online, it will provide you with relevant advertisements. So if you spend all day long surfing the net in search of cheap laptops, it will send you IT adds – it is as simple as that. It makes sense for a mobile carrier like Orange to implement such a technology since its voice revenues have been on the downward slope. This goes for other carriers as well, not just Orange; it seems that people are turning away from voice and towards broadband services.


BT for example has already started to test Phorm technology on a number of about 10,000 volunteers. Other companies such as Virgin Media, TalkTalk, and Carphone Warehouse are seriously considering the option of implementing Phorm’s technology.

What does Orange not like about Phorm technology? According to Paul-François Fournier the main issue is privacy. Orange handles private, sensitive data of all its customers and all of them expect Orange to handle it safely and securely. Since the model proposed by Phorm did not stipulate in a clear manner what measures will be enforced regarding customer privacy, the two companies cannot work together (for now at least). Mr. Fournier suggests that Orange customers be polled about this and a decision made according to what they say.

Phorm was quick to respond to the lack of privacy claim and said that the standards it employs are higher, considerably higher than the standards currently being used in the advertising industry. When coming up with this technology, the main focus has been kept on customer privacy.





Don't forget to:

RSS


Tags: Phorm, Orange, Virgin Media, BT

Link to this article:



Add comment:
Name(Required)
Email(Required - Never shown)
Website(Optional)
Comment(Required):

Insert the following code:
Software News
Duh Worm Attacks Jailbroken iPhones, Turns them into Zombies
Why would you want to jailbreak an iPhone? Well, for those of you that do not know this, jailbreaking the iPhone is a process that allows you to bypass Apple’s official distribution mechanism and run...
23 Nov 2009
This Week Only: One Opera Unite App per Day
Opera Software, the company behind the innovative Opera web browser has just announced the release of Opera 10.10 as a final, stable software application. That is good news for Opera users, but here comes one better...
23 Nov 2009
Reinvent the Web: Opera 10.10 Final with Opera Unite
Earlier this year Opera Software announced that it would “reinvent the web” – then on the 16th of June do this (reinvent the world I mean) with Opera Unite, a new technology that makes the old client-server computing model look outdated....
23 Nov 2009
Palm Delivers WebOS 1.3.1 to European Customers
Palm recently announced that it updated the WebOS (the operating system that powers the Palm Pre and the Palm Pixi) to version 1.3.1 and that it released it to its...
23 Nov 2009
Chromium OS Goes Open-Source
This summer Google let the world know that it is working on a new operating system meant for the user that spends most of his time online. The operating system – aptly named Chrome OS because it is a natural extension...
20 Nov 2009
Office 2010 Beta Downloads Available to the Public
Earlier this week Redmond-based software giant Microsoft announced that Office 2010 became available for download as a Beta. The catch was that only ...
20 Nov 2009
Recommended Tools

Top Downloads