Some notes from the Phorm sales pitch

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Brian Randell [Brian.Randell () ncl ac uk]
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 12:39 PM
To: David Farber
Subject: Some notes from the Phorm sales pitch

Dave:

You've almost certainly been sent this already, but just in case . . .

cheers

Brian

=====

Some notes from the Phorm sales pitch

Here are the notes I took from a sales pitch to a client. Although
NDAs were passed around, all of the technical and business consulting
staff refused to sign them, so this information is freely available
and can in no way be considered a trade secret. Some of my notes come
from other people's observations in the ensuing PR war. Phorm's sales
teams have been aggressively targeting large ISPs with low margins
around Europe and the US in the last year or so. They only pitch to
board level decision makers, and like to avoid providing any
technical detail whenever possible.

Phorm has hired a specialty PR company, Citigate Dewe Rogerson
[citigatedr.co.uk] to alter public perception of any complaints found
in blogs, news programs, and on technical sites. They have been
aggressively pasting boilerplate responses about the legality of the
system, using carefully sanitized language to obfuscate the debate.
The company specialises in mastering public opinion as part of crisis
management during corporate fiascos.
. . .
I will add that the people behind Phorm have been developing and
selling malware and adware for a number of years, and apparently made
enough money off of an impossible to uninstall adware toolbar to fund
this latest push into malware distribution. Their programmers are
mostly Saint Petersburg based, home to the Russian Business Network
[slashdot.org]. Their servers are kept only in Saint Petersburg and
China, so no ISP customer data is ever stored in the UK. Any
personally identifying information they obtain about UK citizens can
never be seen or purged using existing UK Data Protection Laws. They
run under dozens of different domain names, the name of the company
has changed from PeopleOnPage to 121media and recently changed from
sysip.net to Phorm. This is typical of a company that knows it will
have to shed it's tarnished brand every year to stay ahead of public
outcry. I expect they already have their next brand lined up when
they need to burn the Phorm brand.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee has seen their presentation, and held a press
conference yesterday to try to stop the practice cold. Even if Phorm
is stopped dead tomorrow, the business conditions and legal loopholes
are still present to encourage ISPs to try this again and again, and
it will certainly be much worse in the US where there is absolutely
no legal protections at all, and a ready market for personal data.


Full paper at http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=489948&cid=22777122

--
School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell () ncl ac uk   PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232  URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/

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