It's a Trust Thing.
At the end of the day, a lot of the issues surrounding Webwise are a matter of trust. Do you trust an organisation that is eavesdropping on all of your web browsing, to not do anything untoward with the information they hold on you?
Sadly, BT and Phorm do not have the best of track records in trustworthy behaviour:
| > In its previous incarnatation as 121Media, the Phorm company has a past as a distributor of spyware software, which used rootkit stealth techniques to conceal itself on infected computers. | More details |
| > It has been claimed by the Mail On Sunday that Phorm's programming team is linked to the Russian secret service, and so literally has 'spyware' experience. | More details |
| > In 2006 and 2007, BT conducted trials of Phorm's technology, without any attempt to give notice to, or ask permission of, the tens of thousands of users whose web browsing they illegally intercepted. | More details |
| > During these trials, when questioned by users that had noticed something strange was happening to their internet connection, BT flatly denied that anything was going on, and instead blamed a probably virus infection. | More details |
| > Phorm's claims of legality (as dissected on this website) show a very selective representation of the actual facts, and spin rather than honesty appears to be a company policy. | More details |
| > Phorm have been exposed editing the entry about their company on Wikipedia, to remove factual information that cast them in a negative light. | More details |
| > Flagrant disregard for copyright and communications interception laws does not tend to suggest that privacy and data protection legislation will be any more respected. | More details |
| > A big deal has been made of how the Phorm system anonymises your profile data, and how you cannot possibly be identified as an individual. But history has shown that it is almost impossible to properly anonymise such data. | More details |
| > The opt-out page presented to BT customers makes no attempt to properly inform users as to the dangers and implications of what they're about to agree to, in particular it glosses over the fact that almost all web traffic will be intercepted if they agree to the terms. It is inexcusable to fail to mention such a serious privacy intrusion. | More details |
| > BT have now completely censored all discussion of Phorm or Webwise on their customer support forums, and erased all trace of any previous discussions. Users attempting to figure out what on earth is going on with their internet connection find themselves summarily banned. Webwise appears to be the product that dare not speak its name. | More details |