Yet more revelations have surfaced of illegal "tests" undertaken by British Telecom (BT) the UK telecommunications giant.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/01/bt_phorm_2006_trial/BT secretly intercepted and profiled the web browsing of 18,000 of its broadband customers in 2006 using advertising technology provided by 121Media, the alleged spyware company that changed its name to Phorm last year.
BT Retail ran the "stealth" pilot without customer consent between 23 September and 6 October 2006. The technology was approved, pending a further trial*.
Documents seen by The Register show that the companies used the secret profiles to target advertising at broadband customers when they visited certain popular websites.
Phorm had purchased commercial space on these websites, although their URLs are not included in the documents. The groups targeted included people interested in finance (for an Egg credit card campaign), weight loss (a Weight Watchers campaign), and jobs (a Monster.com campaign).
The technical report drawn up by BT in the wake of the 2006 trial states: "The validation was made within BT's live broadband environment and involved a user base of approximately 18,000 customers, with a maximum of 10,000 online concurrently.
"The customers who participated in the trial were not made aware of this fact as one of the aims of the validation was not to affect their experience."
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) makes intercepting internet traffic without a warrant or consent an offence.
I still cant believe BT think they can hide this sort of abuse from the public gaze and pretend they did not break the law, it is now clear they did, if they want to retian any sort of credibility then the time for plain talking and compensation for those affected is now.
