BT shelves Phorm plans.... for now

[nixforfun]

BT has shelved plans to implement behavioural ad-serving technology by Phorm that has drawn criticism as a potential risk to customer privacy. Phorm was a trial done by BT to use Deep Packet inspection to build customer profiles based on web-surfing patterns. This was a big blow to privacy norms in the UK & EU.

Officially they have mentioned increased focus on rollout of their NGA as the reason for this but it has always been clear that BT has been under tremendous pressure to shelve this plan as it has been very unpopular since it was leaked. The matter was investigated by UK Government commissions and EU Commissions at various levels and BT had always been under tremendous pressure to shelve its plans.

So, no privacy encroachment as of now but it seems CPW and Virgin Media have also been in discussions to deploy Phorm.