Quote:
Originally Posted by basa
Let’s face it, you can chew the fat forever and a day about the deployment of the Phorm/Webwise software, but I feel it will change nothing. The heat has gone out of the fight both here and at El Reg.
Most people in the UK are so used to being manipulated, screwed, ripped-off and spied upon, they no longer have the heart or tools to fight, even if they knew what was going on.
We here who know of these things are a minority. Your majority internet punter won’t have a clue and will be sucked into any opt-in, EULA or change in T&Cs to allow this crap with the seductive promise of a 'safer surfing experience'.
On the other hand BT & VM would probably love to be rid of us (the geeks) who are a thorn in their side and more than likely the greatest users of their bandwidth.
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Everybody is in limbo until something happens. Phorm have displayed some intelligence in switching off the counter-productive PR exercise but the damage has been done and hundreds if not thousands are waiting to act when the system goes live.
When it goes live it will almost certainly rank as number one reason for everything from slow surfing to area wide outages. It will almost certainly be portrayed, on help forums, as the first reason of choice for everything bad and complaints will prove costly for the ISP's. Just like the transparent caches were hated, multiply the spyware by any large factor you choose.
VM saw a mass exodus when it had an argument with Sky over programs and I suspect that Phorm could be far more damaging, over time.
There is a very strong possibility that the relativity new UK phenomena of class action suits could come into play over the Phorm issue. A few thousand disgruntled customers banding together to employ the best legal and technical minds available with a challenge to the very thin ice legality of ISP violation of privacy could easily see one or more ISP's into bankruptcy.
The ISP's have good reason to be very fearful because the Phorm issue has triggered powerful emotions and they stand a chance of being the target of the public's "we have had enough of the spying culture" revenge.
The ISP's are motivated by greed and are potentially going to employ a cavalier attitude toward their customers. They are ultimately responsible if they allow the hardware to be connected and they will face the backlash. The failure of most large companies and governments can be attributed to one decision that went too far (10p tax rates) that seemed like a good idea at the time. Liaison with a spy company may prove to be a catastrophe of director's ego over commonsense and see the eventual deployment of many golden parachutes.