Phorm update: £9m loss

Phorm has reported a loss of $15 million – around £9 million since June this year. Despite the losses, the company remains hopeful that it will make headway with UK service providers with its ad-tracking Webwise technology. The report acknowledges the loss of its contract with Carphone Warehouse, while BT, Virgin and TalkTalk have stalled [...]

Pundits predict Phorm losses

Adware company Phorm is predicted to announce losses upwards of £9 million when it produces its interim financial report today. The company behind the controversial Webwise software which tracks web users’ browsing habits last week lost its technology chief, Stratis Scelparis who was involved in BT trials of the product. The Telegraph predicts losses between [...]

I was caught downloading – and it felt like entrapment

A file sharer, preferring to remain anonymous, speaks to Surveillance News about getting caught by games developer Techland after illegally downloading one of their products two years ago. He suspects the company posed as a file sharer, posting a bogus games file to spy on any downloader’s IP address. A month later, he received a [...]

Comment: surveillance under the Tories

“We believe that your personal information belongs to you, not the state. Where private details are collected by government, they are held on trust. The government must be held accountable to its citizens, not the other way round.” Such is the promising introduction to a new Conservative policy document on ‘Reversing the rise of the [...]

Pictures of you: energy identity

By 2020, energy-reading “smart meters” will be able to tell you exactly how much electricity and gas you are using in your home. But the technology has already developed to identify when you switched your TV on, what time you did it, and what the make is – just through reading your electricity meter. How [...]

Pro-privacy measures in Scotland

Scottish citizens will hand over minimal private information to public services if proposals put forward by a new consultation document go ahead. The Scottish government is hoping to increase public faith in data protection by public services and has ruled out centralised databases in favour of greater privacy. It will also be harder for public [...]