Posted: 17th Apr, 2009 By: MarkJ
Wikipedia, which is one of the largest online websites in the world, has become the latest to officially opt-out of Phorm's WebWise behavioural advertising technology. Phorm works with UK ISPs to monitor what websites you visit for use in targeted advertising campaigns, though website owners can opt-out of having their sites included in its profiling.
After some internal discussion on whether opting out of the Phorm user-profiling system in the UK would legitimize it, we’re going ahead and requesting an opt-out for all the domains under the Wikimedia Foundation’s control:
Subject: Phorm opt-out for Wikipedia.org and related domains
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:28:11 -0700
From: Brion Vibber
To: website-exclusion@webwise.com
CC: private-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To whom it may concern --
The Wikimedia Foundation requests that our web sites including Wikipedia.org and all related domains be excluded from scanning by the Phorm / BT Webwise system, as we consider the scanning and profiling of our visitors' behavior by a third party to be an infringement on their privacy.
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/04/wikimedia-opting-out-of-phorm/The news follows a similar move by Amazon, which opted-out of Phorm earlier this week.