Institute of Practitioners in Advertising fail comprehension test on Phorm

Brand Republic give space to the IPA's legal director Marina Palomba, who fails to comprehend the technical aspects of Phorm's intrusive deep packet inspection system for delivery of targeted advertising (IPA blasts privacy campaigners for anti-competitive threat to Phorm).  The article quotes her as saying:

The IPA's legal director, Marina Palomba, said that if the major companies were to take this action, it would be anti-competitive.

Palomba added: "Google has launched its own behavioural targeting system, so why is the ORG targeting Phorm in particular, which is a competitor of Google? It's incomprehensible.

"People need to be more concerned about the misuse of data by Google, which owns the data, rather than Phorm, which is a technology company." 

I mean, let's be clear here, IPA doesn't stand for India Pale Ale (the usage I'm most familiar with) but Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, and it styles itself as "the UK's leading trade and professional body for advertising, media and marketing communications agencies".   It's not exactly going to rock the boat, even when the vile former spyware merchants Phorm are concerned.

Palomba is pontificating about things that are clearly beyond her technical understanding.  I recommend she reads more widely on the subject.  Sites she might look at include dephormation, badphorm and nodpi, all of which host a large array of technical information and discussion suited to even the meanest intelligence.

The distinction between Google and Phorm that Ms Palomba is unable or unwilling to perceive is  in the means of data acquisition, and its handling. As Alexander Hanff says at no dpi (IPA Legal Director must have got her Law Society membership out of a Christmas Cracker):

As to why people are not attacking Google's BTA model? Well firstly, by using Google you are agreeing to their terms, if you don't want to agree to their terms you simply don't use them - but to sweeten things a little more Google have gone the extra mile to provide a comprehensive tool to fine tune how you allow Google to use data which I think is a good thing. Whereas I am as wary of Google's position as most their model is completely different to Phorm's and can be completely avoided if required.