 |  | By Neil Hawkins Senior Staff Writer Friday, 04 April 2008 |
THE row over the introduction of Phorm, an advertising technology that monitors the websites you visit erupted this week, whilst Virgin made some minor changes to its traffic management and some major changes to the future of mankind….
BT gets it in the neck from all sides over privacy row
BT has revealed that it has carried out two secret trials of the controversial Phorm advertising technology during the past two years.
The technology which analyses the websites you visit and targets your advertising accordingly, has caused alarm amongst broadband users and privacy groups.
Most broadband providers have listened to their customers and shunned the system, but BT and Virgin Media have been in talks with Phorm whilst TalkTalk has made it an ‘opt-in’ decision, meaning broadband users will have to activate it themselves.
The row has escalated in recent days however after the BBC picked up the story and featured it during their popular ‘Breakfast’ news slot.
A spokesperson commented that BT trialled the technology in order to “evaluate the functional and technical performance of the platform."
They went on to say, "It is important for BT to ensure that before any new technologies are deployed, they are robust and fit for purpose. No personally identifiable information was processed, stored or disclosed during this test."
Nevertheless it is worrying that this could happen to 30,000 customers without their consent or any notification.
When Phorm is rolled out across BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk broadband networks users will be informed. This could lead to many objections to the snooping and many may simply say ‘adios’.
Virgin Media tweaks traffic management
VIRGIN Media has altered its traffic management policy, albeit only slightly, by changing the speed which Virgin Media Broadband Size L customers get throttled down to should they exceed their download/upload limits.
Previously Broadband Size L 4Mbps connections were cut to a lowly 1Mbps for five hours if the customer using it exceeded the amount laid out by Virgin Media in its policy.
However, since Virgin Media has kindly been giving broadband users broadband size L a free upgrade to 10Mbps, it has concluded that cutting them down to 1Mbps was a bit harsh and has now decided to increase this speed to 2.5Mbps.
Although this is an increase, to cut the speed by ¾ still seems quite harsh, but Virgin Media has also increased the amount of data you are allowed to transmit before which your speed will be temporarily cut.
Redten customers face long battle
IT seems that the Redten Internet debacle is not over yet and will not be for a while.
Customers not only still suffer from the problems documented over the past couple of weeks (slower speeds, new limits on download etc) but could now have to take the company to the small claims courts to get out of their lengthy contracts.
Redten could sort it all out by increasing the recently introduced monthly download limit which is the one thing which angers the majority of customers.
If you are a Redten customer and are looking for some info it has all been collated into one place at this handy website setup by another Redten customer, www.deadten.com
April fools roundup
OK, ok, it might be a bit late (or early?!) to start talking about April Fools but we couldn’t miss this opportunity to bring together some of the better April fools stories from around the web.
Here is our pick of the best:
- Virgle: Take a trip to outer space courtesy of Google and Virgin Media’s very own bearded wonder!
Richard Branson managed to convince a whole hall full of people at the CTIA Wireless trade show that Virgin would be partnering up with Google to begin a colony on Mars, flying there in a modern day Noah’s Ark.
Thirty conference-goers even got up on stage with him as they volunteered themselves to be part of Martian history.
- Google Custom Time
After a while you start to get the impression that all Google employees spend their time doing is lounge around dreaming up their next April fools gag.
Another of this year’s jokes was Gmail Custom Time, a new feature of Gmail which allows you to date any email you send “back until April 1, 2004, the day we launched Gmail.”
As with all Google technology the secrets are never revealed but they do say that custom time avoids all the perils of ‘normal’ time travel by utilising an “e-flux capacitor”.
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