Safari - cookies - adblocking - doesn't solve the real problem.
There was a version of that Guardian/Charles Arthur/Phorm article on Tuesday which had comments, including a comment which explained in simple terms why the article was misleading because there's little point blocking cookies etc. http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/04/08/cambridge_expert_use_safari_to_evade_phorm.html
Cookies don't help, Safari doesn't help, adblockers don't help, if your concern is that Phorm and your ISP are still intercepting and processing and analysing and recording details of your private personal Internet traffic.
The fact is that all that happens with Phorm if you use safari, or otherwise "opt out" using cookies, is that you don't see the targeted ads.
But the targeted ads aren't the real issue anyway.
The real issue is the unlawful interception and processing of personal private data, and the cookies don't figure in that part of the Phorm business model, customer data is intercepted and processed whether they are opted in or opted out. Your only reliable "opt out" is to opt for an ISP that doesn't do deals with Phorm.
Please, if you hear anyone else spouting rubbish about cookie-blocking or ad-blocking being of any use in stopping Phorm processing your personal data, put them right.
Here are the relevant comments from that article (with their author's permission, and including their link back to El Reg :) ):
The cookies might disable the delivery of the adverts (there are other ways of doing that too) but users' traffic is still passing through (and being processed by) the Phorm-managed kit installed on the ISP's core network, which really ought to be a much greater concern (not that there's ever been any guarantee of privacy on the Internet, but there are *laws* about what can and can't legally be intercepted).
Let's look at a postal analogy, which perhaps may help.
The Royal Mail signs a deal with a 3rd party to deliver extra-targeted adverts to RM customers. The 3rd party has a machine in the sorting office which gets to open everybody's mail, and reads it, unless it's encrypted. The machine records details of the content of the mail, and uses that record to add "carefully selected targeted direct mail" when the postman delivers your post (targeted direct mail = your web adverts). The advertisers whose extra-carefully-targeted ads are being delivered get to pay for the service, obviously (these people initially included The Guardian, remember?).
The mail targeting service isn't described as such to the end user customer, it is described as an "enhanced privacy service", which the end user can opt out of, but by default you are opted in.
If you do choose to "opt out", your mail still passes through the subcontractors mail-opener-reader, and mail content details are still recorded. The only difference opting out makes is that you get a post-it note attached to your letterbox that says "standard junk-mail only" (post-it note = cookie) so you don't get the personally profiled adverts, just the default ones.
Taking the analogy a tiny bit further, the Royal Mail's Chief Technology Officer would have been involved in the running of an illegal mail-interception trial whose existence was repeatedly denied at the time, and after the trial the RM CTO leaves to go and be CTO at the company doing the interception. Some two years later the truth begins to emerge...
Marvellous.
http://www.phorm.com/about/exec_scleparis.php
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/01/bt_phorm_2006_trial/
Biting the hand that feeds IT
