Phorm web tracking to be rolled out by BT

After much controversy BT has announced that it is officially rolling out Phorm web tracking to consumers that wish to take part.

Broadband and communications giant, British Telecom, has announced that it is officially rolling out Phorm web tracking amongst consumers that wish to take part in a trial before a nationwide launch goes ahead. The communications giant has already been slated for apparently conducting this testing without the knowledge of users.

The aim of the trial is to track the Internet usage of participants so that targeted advertising can be sent to them based on how they use the Internet. BT customers will be invited to take part in the trial, which was set to start in March of this year but experienced delays relating to technical issues and legal problems.

In a recent statement officials from BT and Phorm said: “Following successful completion of this trial and an appropriate period of analysis and planning, it is currently expected that Phorm’s platform will be rolled out across BT’s network.” The new trial will apparently see up to ten thosuand customers with BT have their Internet usage monitored for targeted advertising to be used.

The aim of the trial and Phrom’s service is to try and make online advertising more targeted and relevant by sending out ads that are relevant to the type of websites that the user visits rather than making them random and often irrelavent to the interests of the user.

The service is known as Webwise, and in a statemnet BT stated: “No personally-identifiably user data is stored as part of Webwise. Only the links between a random unidentifiable number contained in a cookie and advertising categories are stored in the system. This information is deleted after a maximum of six months. It is simply not possible to reverse engineer user identity using this information.”