Republished: A quick look at Webwise Discover
Originally published on Benscomputer.no-ip.org 06 June 2009
Well, as I posted in the News links yesterday, Phorm have launched a service called Webwise Discover. It appears that this is largely a front end, allowing the user to further benefit from having Phorm follow you around the internet.
But lets take a quick look at it;
So, I found it whilst trying to get to Phorms website, phorm.com, but
was instead confronted with a vile flash intro (god I hate those
things).
As annoying as flash
intros are, they don't really reflect on the quality of a service,
though they do make me more likely to go elsewhere!
So anyway, once we get past the flash intro, we are taken to the Discoverer page (there's a link on there to go to Phorms corporate page as well), and Webwise Discover is presented to us.
Webwise
Discover brings relevant content from across the web directly to you,
wherever you are online.
It
works by understanding your interests from
the
pages you visit. So, if you're interested
in
celebrities and football you will receive a range
of
the latest stories, video clips, blogs etc. on your favourite celebrity
and favourite team.
So, as the name suggests, it is reliant upon the WebWise service
itself. That is to say, if you don't have Phorm earwigging your line,
you can't use Discover.
For once, I'm not going to delve too much into the problems with the
Phorm service. This article is aimed more at looking at Discover, not
that there is too much information available just yet. Phorm on the
other hand, can't just show the service on its merits, they feel the
need to add in a line about privacy, that really has more to do with
WebWise itself than it does Discoverer.
Webwise Discover
is a free service that will be offered by internet service providers.
If you choose to activate Webwise Discover, it will provide
personalised content and useful advertising,
and has
been designed to never know who you are, keep no record of where you've
been, provides free and transparent choice and stays away from anything
sensitive. If at any time you don't want it, you can turn it off
wherever you see it.
We already know what the transparent choice is, they will Opt you in
automatically, then you can opt out if you wish. Of course if you
delete that cookie, you're back in.
The statement about turning Discoverer off wherever you see it, gives a
(albeit slightly prejudiced) suggestion to me that the Discover service
is going to appear on a lot of pages, and will probably bug the living
hell out of me. Although I can't see anything on their website
explaining the mechanism for turning Discover off, experience tells us
that it will probably involve cookies.
Worse than that, I dare say that even when turned off, it will still be
present so that you can switch it back on if you want. More bandwidth
wasted, more annoyances from flash type boxes.
Now, it appears this service would bug the hell out of me, and even
without the Privacy Implications, I think I could safely say that I
would not use it. But, it would appear that I am in the minority;
Polls say
82% of people liked webwise discover and anti-phishing, 72% just like
Discover.
- Populus
Research survey of 2075 broadband users
Now, (and I know I said I would try and avoid this issue) a large part
of me wonders just how informed these users were. I.e were they shown
this shiny new service and asked if they liked it, or where they given
a more technical detail of exactly what it entails?
People I've spoken to, like the look fo Discover (some hate it though),
but are generally put off once they are told the mechanism of how it
learns your interests. That is obviously a very small sample of people
compared to the 2075 users surveyed, but for myself I'm not convinced.
So the question is, would you trust your privacy to a company like
Phorm in order to use a service such as Discover?