Titan opposes behavioural targeting

(23 June ~ 27 June)
TitanADSL said it will not monitor customers’ browsing behaviour using a controversial advert placement technology developed by Phorm.

Phorm claims to be able to match people’s interests with relevant adverts by putting anonymous cookies on their computers.

The technology, known as Webwise, can also be used to warn people against phishing sites or links in a spam email because while Webwise serves adverts by monitoring the URLs people type in, it also checks the URLs against its blacklists of phishing sites.

TitanADSL product development specialist Abs Kumar told Z. Jian: “We will not subject our customers to Phorm. We find it extremely unethical because you don’t want somebody else to know which website you’re visiting.” The company has been rated the second best ISP in the UK by ISPreview.

While other ISPs are considering opting in or out of the Websense system, the latter could spark concerns due to not only privacy issues but also unsolicited adverts---a definition of spam.

In its privacy examination report to Ernst & Young, an independent auditing body, Phorm states: “Phorm Service will retain only information about general categories of interest associated with a randomly generated ID (category matches) such as “ID #45678 is interested in IPODs.”