Orange UK (France Telecom) has told the Financial Times newspaper that while there was still "huge potential" for broadband customers’ data to be used in target advertising, it would not be adopting Phorm because of related privacy concerns:


To be fair Orange has only ever expressed an interest in Phorm, unlike BT and TalkTalk (The Carphone Warehouse) that appear to be preparing the system for launch. Phorm works with ISPs to monitor what websites you visit for use in targeted advertising campaigns, though its methods have raised many legal and privacy concerns:


Phorm is still understood to be in the "advanced" stages of shopping its service to several other as yet unidentified ISPs. Many consumers will no doubt be pleased that at least one of the major providers has taken a stand against it.

Meanwhile BT (Webwise) is currently in the process of running Phorm's first public UK trial, while Orange is likely to survey its customers to find out what data they would or would not be comfortable sharing.