Tuesday 28 April 2009

Phorm come out clubbing from the ropes

The Media Guardian report here on Phorm's new pages titled "Stop Phoul Play" (accessible here). It states that it is the 'website that hits back at the "privacy pirates'" smear campaign against Phorm'. As the Guardian notes, it adopts a bizarre and somewhat desperate tone of voice appearing highly unprofessional.

This blog is perhaps more sensitive to the concerns of marketers and advertisers than others, but this move is perplexing. In describing how "they" work (viewable here), Phorm describe 'unfortunate fellow bloggers who refuse to tow the party line – they are all swarmed by “letter-writers” and oddballs who intimidate and bully the poor unfortunate'. Whilst representatives of NoDPI are keen to engage with the blogosphere to put their point of view across, there has certainly been no intimidation here (see their responses to my post about the recent Town Hall meeting here). Perplexing!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I expect Phorms latest PR coup negates any incredulity that may be ascribed to even the most vehnement privacy campaigner.

The stopphoulplay web site is very much par for the course. Having failed to hoodwink the public, Phorm are now attempting to discredit anybody who expesses legal and technical concerns. For example, Phorms CEO recently branded Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the web) a "neo-luddite".

Adware, spyware and popups have already created a negative public perception of web advertising. Phorm are sullying it further and disreputing their associates in the process. Awful company.

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I am director of the Media and Persuasive Communication (MPC) network at Bangor University where I also lecture on political-economy of the media. I am currently working on a book provisionally titled Deconstructing Privacy for Peter Lang and leading two empirical projects in connection with privacy perception and the use of new media for smoking cessation. I am author of Creativity and Advertising: Affect, Events and Process (Routledge, 2013); The Mood of Information: A Critique of Behavioural Advertising (Continuum, 2011); and Digital Advertising (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2009). Please contact me at mcstay@bangor.ac.uk if you are interested in Ph.D supervision or consultancy services.