Nationwide Opts Out of Phorm

In the UK, Nationwide Building Society is the latest firm to bar the tracking of its site visitors by Phorm's controversial online behavioural targeting software. Nationwide joins other high profile firms including Amazon and Wikipedia.

The news follows last month's announcement by BT and Carphone Warehouse that they have no immediate plans to use the technology.

BT said last December that it expected to deploy Phorm's Webwise software after further trials, following previous legal problems it had encountered after using customers' data without permission.

However, the telecoms giant decided not to proceed with rolling out Webwise to its 4.8 million broadband customers, saying that the decision had been made because of its need to conserve resources.

Today's announcement by Nationwide also follows the decision by Carphone Warehouse's broadband provider TalkTalk to end its agreement with the firm. Unlike BT, TalkTalk had not begun trialing Phorm's software.

A Nationwide spokeswoman explained: 'Our intention is to opt out of allowing Phorm to collect data about users on our web site in order to protect the privacy of our customers.'

Virgin Media, the third British ISP in talks with Phorm, has also refused to publicly back the technology which has come under fire from privacy campaigners who accuse Phorm of snooping.

Last month, Phorm posted an operating loss of $49.8m (2007: $32.8m) for the year ended 31 December 2008, and a further $19.7m for the first six months of 2009.

This morning Phorm's shares were down by nearly 6% to 193p.

Web site: www.phorm.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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