Phorm Continues To Lose Executives - Cash dwindling, employees leaving...

Phorm Continues To Lose Executives - Cash dwindling, employees leaving...
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Phorm Continues To Lose Executives
Cash dwindling, employees leaving...
(old news - 08:53AM Thursday Dec 18 2008)
tags: legal · business · privacy · world

Behavioral advertising firm Phorm just got done jettisoning a slew of executives, and now it appears that the former rootkit developer has lost both its UK-based CEO and CFO. Like NebuAD here in the States, controversy has surrounded their plan to buy your browsing data from ISPs in order to target you with customized ads. The company's cash reserves are dwindling, but it does appear that several ISPs, including British Telecom and Virgin Media, will be moving forward with the snoopy system next year. If successful, Phorm hopes to expand their business model to the States.

Friday Evening Links

Phorm Still Coming To The U.S.?

British Telecom To Expand Phorm Use

Wednesday Evening Links

Amazon 'Opts Out' of Phorm User Tracking

Sweden's New Piracy Law Foiled By ISPs

NSA Still 'Overcollecting' American Data

Phorm Fighting Tightening Balance Sheet AND Critics

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funchords @ 18th Dec 11:28AM:
No way, not here...

It sounds like investors are reading the tea leaves -- subscribers don't want their Internet tapped any more than they want their telephone tapped.

If they think attitudes about that in the UK are strong, just wait until they try and bring that here.

Just like with NebuAd -- once the light was turned on, the roaches fled the scene.

Spyware is spyware -- be it rooted in the computer or in the network.
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon -- KJ7RL
What you do at Christmas does not matter so much; What counts are the Christmas things you do all year through.
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anon @ 18th Dec 02:02PM:
Legal?

I hope BT weren't relying on Third Party Legal advice from Phorm because the Legal Bods at Phorm also seem to have quietly slipped away?
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Karl Bode @ 18th Dec 02:09PM:
Re: No way, not here...

I wonder.

If I were an executive incessantly obsessed with wealth, I would think I'd eventually realize I don't need middlemen for this. ISPs already sell Clickstream data without user awareness. They already want to be content companies (Comcast buying Fandango, AT&T BlueRoom). They're jealous as hell of Google's ad revenue.

Why not just become ad companies themselves, use their lobbying power to gut privacy and wiretap laws, and directly use user browsing data for higher click through, tailored advertising they control? Then the deep-pocketed incumbents could sell the service to smaller ISPs without the resources to develop this....

Seems like a higher ROI than their efforts at creating 3D Browsers, bad YouTube knockoffs and other such stuff...

I wonder if the NebuADs of tomorrow come directly from AT&T, Verizon and Comcast?
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anon @ 18th Dec 02:37PM:
Re: No way, not here...

A much bigger task that it may first appear, the odds are stacked against ISPs & others who try to put back the clock & denude peoples hard fought for Human Rights!

»www.hrweb.org/legal/cpr.html#Article%2017.1

Article 17

No one shall be subjected to ARBITRARY or UNLAWFUL interference with his PRIVACY, family, home or CORRESPONDENCE, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation.
Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
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anon @ 18th Dec 03:32PM:
Which way is Phorm facing?

When it "lost" its last four board members including the Chairman, the spin was that this would assist in a UKcentric approach.
Now the UK based CEO CFO has disappeared, along with some of the UK based legal team.
Which way are Phorm facing now?

I note also that there is no warm statement from the departing CFO.

The markets do not appear to be convinced by the Phorm spin on the recent board changes, nor the optimistic comments about the successful completion of the BT trials.

The lack of any clear public independent statement from BT themselves is also ominous. They have reportedly commented on their intranet, but the same press officer who made the intranet comments (Adam Liversage) was reportedly unwell, and unable to comment to the press. ?? Do BT not have a deputy press officer?

We have seen Phorm statements before that have spoken for their partners, and then have had to be corrected, when those partners issued retractions, clarifications or corrections to the over-enthusiastic Phorm spin.

Ertugrul's second statement seems a tad less upbeat about the progress made with the trials than his earlier one a few days ago. Maybe someone from BT rang him up and asked for a bit more caution in his choice of wording?
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funchords @ 18th Dec 07:05PM:
Re: No way, not here...

The ISPs could be the next NebuAds. I think that Charter saw NebuAd as an opportunity to float the idea -- why else would Charter be the only ISP to pre-notify its customers? NebuAd came along and became the convenient fool for an idea that had Charter and its buddies both salivating in anticipation and shaking in fear.

"Project Canoe" ("Cable's Advertising Network Observing Everything," perhaps) or "Canoe Ventures," an ad network being formed by Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Cox Communications, Charter Communications and Bright House Networks. By using the information they have on you or can garner about you, they'll feed your cable-addressable box ads that are appropriate to your "Joe Sixpack" lifestyle.

Google has (had? still has?) its own plans to jump to TV advertising and Canoe sure wants to stop that -- following the Cable ISP Sandvine-like mantra of, "if you can't beat 'em, block 'em." (It's working to keep Verizon out of Philly!)

"Let's abuse our view into our trusting customer's homes and habits in order to sell them erection pills and ringtones." But how far could they go and get away with it? Could they tap the 'net during the day to find out what to sell us at night?

NebuAd seems to have provided the answer.
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon -- KJ7RL
What you do at Christmas does not matter so much; What counts are the Christmas things you do all year through.
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TamaraB @ 19th Dec 02:33AM:
Re: No way, not here...

Wasn't Nebuad's downfall due to the questionable legality of DPI itself? How would ISPs escape the same fate?

Bob
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Karl Bode @ 19th Dec 10:40AM:
Re: No way, not here...

Wasn't Nebuad's downfall due to the questionable legality of DPI itself? How would ISPs escape the same fate?

NebuAD's downfall was that their opt-out system never quite worked, potentially violating wiretap laws and they lacked the funds to lobby effectively or defend themselves.

AT&T and Verizon have some of the most powerful lobbying operations and lawyers in DC, and are already pushing a "voluntary" privacy code that requires customers opt-in, instead of opt-out:

»Verizon: Public Shame Will Keep Us Honest About Privacy

Once they get Congress to sign off on this, I'm guessing they themselves become the behavioral ad vendors...
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anon @ 19th Dec 02:29PM:
Re: No way, not here...

How do you Opt-in the Website Owners, look at all those Copyright Notices etc? (It's call Intellectual Property!)
And how do you Opt-in some Customers & make sure none of the others go anywhere near the DPI Kit.

This is where these Systems become uneconomic because the ISP then has to have totally separate IP ranges for each etc.

{To make it worse once any Website knows the IP range & objects to their data being "scraped" a Block is placed on the IP range!}

The Real problem is the WWW is a Global Communication Network & it affects other Nations & other Laws which cannot be Lobbied or Catered for by the US, UK , EU etc alone!
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