An email we've seen with the name of Charles Dunstone, head of Carphone Warehouse (and of course of TalkTalk) quotes him agreeing to the statement that "as far as TalkTalk is concerned, the Phorm system is never enabled until a user explictly decides to 'opt in'."
A PR for TalkTalk says that "It's certainly the case that Carphone has the policy that any of its customers who want to use Phorm have to positively opt-in. Their belief is that customers should not get the service by default and that reception towards these type of services is always better if customers understand them and the benefit to them and want it - not if they found that, without their consent, data relating to their telecoms usage - however secure and anonymous - was being shared with others".
So that leaves BT and Virgin Media, so far, without a clear policy - but with the indication that they will go for an opt-out, not opt-in, policy. The suggestion is that there's lots of money - perhaps £87m per year - in it for BT if it gets enough people using it. But is the TalkTalk move going to torpedo efforts to get millions of people using it?
In vaguely related news, we'll have the full podcast interview with Kent Ertegrul, chief executive of Phorm, up soon (promise) with a link; and in trading on the London Stock Exchange's AIM, Phorm's stock is.. hmm, down 11%. That can't be good. (Then again, it's up by 2.5x over the past year.) Who's been selling, then?
