http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ne...icle4847212.ece


For people who don't know what Phorm is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorm

With this being the interesting part: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorm#Questions_over_legality

I fucking hate BT.

Anyone know how easy/difficult it is to cancel your contract with them?

Depends on your contract, but generally all you need to do is give them your notice (normally a month) and that's it done. You have to be careful about agreeing to their contracts too. Quite a few have minimum length periods and while under contract you are sometimes offered sweeteners that also re-enable that minimum period.

For example, I was phoned up (cold called) a month or two back and asked if I would like a reduction in my bill. Naturally I said yes. It was only a couple of quid but I asked if there was any catch, like having to take on some new service or something. She claimed there were no strings attached so I said yes. It was only while she was reading me the confirmation that she slipped in "this will involve a minimum contract period of 12 months".

If you are going to cancel your broadband, you are as well keeping the landline contract. Most ISPs require a BT landline for their service.

If your inside the initial minimum 12 month contract, theres a £70 fee if you cancel.

If you're on a BT broadband service, as far as I'm aware you can opt out of the Phorm rollout. What I'm wondering is the rollout purely for BT Broadband customers or do any ISPs using BT's network get roped in as well? Are we all going to need an LLU service to distance ourselves from Phorm?

The interesting thing is how BT expect to deliver these adverts.

I use a BT modem, but have only the drivers installed. I don't have any BT software on my machine at all and I can't see how they could include it in content being sent down from a remote site. The only way I can think of it working is a proxy push through that puts in one of those full page adverts that then have a link "click to continue to the site". If that was implemented I think you'd find people leaving their service in droves.

Another way would be to enforce the use of a connection application, one that sits as an abstraction layer between the modem drivers and the OS connection request, only allowing connection to happen if their webwise software is running on the client. Again if something like that was introduced, again you would expect people to leave their service very quickly.



Even setting aside those comments, there is still a question over the legality of the software. All fine and well being an opt-in service, but BT are currently talking about it being an opt-out, meaning you need to know to ask for your data not to be intercepted and parsed for relevant advertising keywords.

Given that theyve signed up with Virgin media and TalkTalk it may be very difficult to get away from them

I would be very surprised if non-LLU ISP's are forced into implementing Phorm just because BT has, though.