BT bans Phorm chatter on its forums

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 19 Nov 2008 at 12:08

BT is preventing customers from discussing its Phorm Webwise trials on the company's support forums.

The country's biggest ISP is currently trialling the controversial behavioural-advertising service, ahead of a potential rollout.

However, BT's taken the rather draconian step of banning discussion about Webwise on its support site.

"Our broadband support forums are designed to be a place where customers can discuss technical support issues and offer solutions," a post announcing the change of policy states.

"To ensure that the forums remain constructive we're tightening up our moderation policies and will be deleting threads that don't provide constructive support. For example, we have removed a number of forum discussions about BT Webwise."

"If you do want to find out more about BT Webwise, we provide lots of information and the facility to contact us at www.bt.com/webwise," the post adds, although there's no forum to discuss the webwise trials on that particular page.

BT's not only banning any further discussion of the Webwise technology - a 200-page thread on the topic has been removed from the site.

Earlier this month, a customer of BT-owned ISP PlusNet received an invite to join Phorm, even though the ISP is not involved in the scheme. BT said the customer was invited by error.

Is Phorm really that bad? Read our feature here